ITT I have problems with video encoding. Again.

I have a couple of .mp4 files that I want to edit in VirtualDub (or VirtualDubMod, whichever), except, of course, VirtualDub can't open it. Doesn't matter to me if I'm editing the .mp4s directly or if I have to convert them first to .avi while achieving the same video quality as the .mp4s. I don't need the audio portion, I just want to work with the video.

The closest I've gotten to achieving this is installing mp4cam2avi and trying to convert it from there, though when I try to do so it prompts me to install a H.264 VfW codec (or something like that, I'm not at my home PC right now). Fair enough; so I go and install that, and nothing's changed. It'll spit out an avi file but upon viewing it in VLC Media Player the video is just... not there. There's no video data at all. Every other program I've tried just won't accept .mp4 files.

So, yeah, I have been Googling around (mainly on VideoHelp.com) and trying to get it done myself but I really hate installing a bunch of junk only to see that it doesn't work, and I don't have the time or patience for that right now (what I'm trying to achieve needs to be done in less than a day from now).

Help?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

What kind of work do you need to do? Some touch-up filters, or you really need to chop up the video?

If you just need to run it through filters, why not use ffdshow with AviSynth?

Create a text file and call it "Whatever.avs". At the very minimum it should have this line:
DirectShowSource("d:\path\to\basil's\pron\x264_aac .mp4", fps=25, convertfps=true) # adjust fps if necessary

Add in whatever filters you like, including hardsubs, smooth filters, resize, whatever.

Open said AviSynth Script in meGUI, select an appropriate codec, and autoencode it. You can later mux in the audio by using MKVmerge, and using the original video as an audio source to go with your new encoded video.

There's nowhere I can't reach.