Timeline not accurate, two different lengths shown

[Bunkermentality]

I am running Movie Maker V6.0 SP1 on Vista.

I have imported a MPEG-2 clip of duration 4 hours.

I have split a front clip from this import. The timeline view shows this
clip to end between two markers: 38:44.00 and 38:46.00 indicating the lenght
to be approximately 38:45

However when I "hover" the mouse on the clip the length reported is 38:41.56

When I publish to a WMV file the length is 38:41 so the last three minutes
have been lost.

Any ideas?

 

[Graham Hughes]

mpegs are terrible to edit, they were made as a watching format. It the mpeg
has very long gops, then the cut made may go to the beginning of the gop and
therefore lose your other info. You could try making your cut a bit
furtherer back in the movie and see what that leaves you with.
Or convert your movies to wmv using something like windows media encoder and
then edit more accuratley.
http://www.myvideoproblems.com/Tutorials/ConvertMpeg2wmv.html

 

[Bunkermentality]

Thanks for that advice. I had noted that use of WMV overcame the timeline
problem. I was using MPG as this is, I believe, a lossless conversion from
the VOBs loaded from the original DVD. When I use WMVs there is significant
loss.

What I want to have is accurate editing so I can cut up my original DVD into
a series of smaller, lossless files for easy access and sharing. Is this
possible? What is the best format? I begin to doubt that lossless editing can
be performed on a PC.

 

[John Inzer]

Thanks for that advice. I had noted that use of WMV overcame the
timeline problem. I was using MPG as this is, I believe, a lossless
conversion from the VOBs loaded from the original DVD. When I use
WMVs there is significant loss.

What I want to have is accurate editing so I can cut up my original
DVD into a series of smaller, lossless files for easy access and
sharing. Is this possible? What is the best format? I begin to doubt
that lossless editing can be performed on a PC.

=========================================
Maybe the following articles will offer some ideas:

Movie Maker 2 - Importing MPEG Files
http://www.papajohn.org/MM2-Importing-Video-MPEG2.html


Movie Maker 2 -
Converting MPEG-2 Files for Importing
http://tinyurl.com/ycv5x7
or...
http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/PapaJohn/50/Converting_MPEG-2_Files.aspx

 

[Graham Hughes]

lossless editing is possible, but not with a lossy format such as mpeg

Convert the vob to a dv.avi, there should be a method in one of the links
John gave.

 

[Bunkermentality]

Thanks Graham & John. I think I've cracked it. Just for the record, in case
anyone else is reading this, the process I followed is:

1. I have converted the DVD VOB files to DV-AVI files using the PapaJohn
instructions for using VirtualDub-MPEG2. This converts a 1GB VOB (approx one
hour's play) to 12GB DV-AVI at resolution 720*576. This conversion, whilst
expensive in disk use, seem lossless.
2. I now use WMM to edit the DV-AVIs and the timeline problem that started
this post has now been eliminated.
3. If I use WMM to cut a 40 minute clip from the DV-AVI and publish to my PC
as "Best quality for playback...." then a 1GB WMV file is created. If I
publish to my PC as "More settings DVI-AVI(PAL)" then an 8GB DV-AVI file is
created. BUT.....regardless of which option I select the quality of the clip
seems identical.
5. So the trick seems to be to perform a lossless copy of the VOB to DV-AVI,
thus preserving quality for future edits. Then use WMM to edit and create
smaller, "best quality" WMV manageable clips. This means a 1GB, one hour, VOB
can be used to create an (apparently) lossless 1.5GB, one hour, WMV.

 

[PapaJohn]

You've got it!!! I just want to note that high quality VOB files are more
like 4 GB per hour, about 1/3 the size of the DV-AVI file made from it. VOB
files can have different levels of compression, as WMV files can... so if
yours is 1 GB, then it was compressed more than a higher quality one.

I don't want viewers to think that the usual VOB to DV-AVI will result in
needing 12 times the disc space.

 

[John Inzer]

Thanks Graham & John. I think I've cracked it. Just for the record,
in case anyone else is reading this, the process I followed is:

1. I have converted the DVD VOB files to DV-AVI files using the
PapaJohn instructions for using VirtualDub-MPEG2. This converts a 1GB
VOB (approx one hour's play) to 12GB DV-AVI at resolution 720*576.
This conversion, whilst expensive in disk use, seem lossless.
2. I now use WMM to edit the DV-AVIs and the timeline problem that
started this post has now been eliminated.
3. If I use WMM to cut a 40 minute clip from the DV-AVI and publish
to my PC as "Best quality for playback...." then a 1GB WMV file is
created. If I publish to my PC as "More settings DVI-AVI(PAL)" then
an 8GB DV-AVI file is created. BUT.....regardless of which option I
select the quality of the clip seems identical.
5. So the trick seems to be to perform a lossless copy of the VOB to
DV-AVI, thus preserving quality for future edits. Then use WMM to
edit and create smaller, "best quality" WMV manageable clips. This
means a 1GB, one hour, VOB can be used to create an (apparently)
lossless 1.5GB, one hour, WMV.

==================
Thanks for the update.

--

John Inzer
MS Digital Media MVP

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This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk