Video Editing

[Jake]

Can anyone suggest some Video Editing software? I'm interested in 'cleaning
up' some captured TV mpeg files (read delete commercials . Nothing
fancy, just intuitive.
TIA

 

[Eric]

Can anyone suggest some Video Editing software? I'm interested in 'cleaning
up' some captured TV mpeg files (read delete commercials . Nothing
fancy, just intuitive.
TIA

If they are MPEG2 files you are going to have a tough time because the
codec is very tightly licensed.

Still....

I've heard different reports (good and bad) about Mpeg2Cut:
<http://darkav.de.vu/>

VirtualDub-MPEG2 <http://fcchandler.home.comcast.net/stable/index.html>
will read but NOT write that format.

I tried a whole bunch of different ones last year and finally had to
admit defeat and pay for a program. I have been much happier with what
I ended up with.

 

[Jake]

I have Pinnacle Expression but I not too enamored with it. What program did
you find that met your needs?

 

[Kittie Spit]

I'd recommend if you haven't already, checking out videohelp.com or
even afterdawn.com. There's lots of stuff there, incl freeware
recommendations, reviews, and some really excellent tutorials. Me, I've
used Pinnacle, Canopus ProCoder, and TMPGenc. Last one is shareware,
that after [I think 30 days, drops down to freeware, but with limited
functions, like I think it only does MPEG-1, not -2.]

Depending on what you want to do, could you use the freeware prog,
Virtual Dub, with the MPEG addon? I'm just asking, as I don't know. I
think it really only fully supports AVI, but may do some limited MPEG
editing with the addon.

Eric's post seems to suggest Virtual Dub w MPEG may be too limited.

Eric: can you please post what SW you went with? I know this is a
freeware discussion, but I'm just curious what you found to be the
best/most reasonably priced.

Hope I'm not asking for too much OT.
Thanks

 

[Eric]

Depending on what you want to do, could you use the freeware prog,
Virtual Dub, with the MPEG addon? I'm just asking, as I don't know. I
think it really only fully supports AVI, but may do some limited MPEG
editing with the addon.

Eric's post seems to suggest Virtual Dub w MPEG may be too limited.

To stay on-topic (at least a little), I'll mention the freeware first.

VDubMP2 will read MP2 well, but will only write to AVI. It's a great
program to have handy when you want to use one of the powerful filters
available. I use it to do field-order swap. But then you have to
re-encode the resulting AVI and that can take forever and you lose a
little quality each time.

Eric: can you please post what SW you went with? I know this is a
freeware discussion, but I'm just curious what you found to be the
best/most reasonably priced.

Perfect suggestion to head over to www.videohelp.com by the way, I
should have mentioned it myself.

I ended up with VideoReDo <http://www.videoredo.com> after looking
around for ages. It is $49.99 and has a free trial period. The new
version includes an automatic "ad-detective" that does a great job
finding the commercials and marking them. I love it because I can cut
or trim and it creates the new file without reencoding the entire
thing. That makes it FAST. Also, the tech support is amazing for this
program. They've already announced that they are working on adding
fade options so your cuts are smoother.

 

[Kittie Spit]

Eric -- thanks for the info. Much appreciated!

 

[Onno Voors]

I'm interested in 'cleaning
up' some captured TV mpeg files (read delete commercials

All Tmpenc versions will do Mpeg1, version 12a will cut Mpeg2 as well. On
www.videohelp.com you can find a few Mpeg2 cutters.