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  1. Member
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    I converted all my mom's VCR home videos to DVD ages ago and now I'm putting them on a computer. Course they are totally unorganized and each DVD (originally VCR) is just a 2-4 hour chunk of random 5 minute videos, sometimes of the same time (jan to april 1994), but some times of the same event (ski trip 95, 96, 97 98).

    I was to split everything down to each event (i.e. 1995-03-07_ski trip.mp4) and convert it to mp4. There are thousands of splits to make. I remember an ancient program called CDWav that you just made tick marks on a 2 hour concert and it split everything into however many files at those exact marks that you made. Then you just renamed the files and used foobar to convert. It took like 5 minutes to do 40 files.

    Does a simple open source / freeware version of this exist in the video world? Handbrake can make mp4s from DVD's easily but I'm not sure about how to handle that sort of mass splitting part.... Ideas?
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  2. Banned
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    CDWav wasn't free by the way. There are a limited number of free options. Commercial programs can do this and do it better, but since you want free, I think VirtualDub can do this. It's not very intuitive so look for a guide if you try to use it. I think there is another program or two that are free that can do this so maybe someone else can post if they know what they are.
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  3. Banned
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    The OP should probably view this thread, which is not exactly glowing about using Video to Video Converter for that task.

    https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/365658-Removing-Commercials-with-Video-To-Video-a-Disaster

    If I had to do this I'd use VideoReDo TV Suite, but it's not free.
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  4. Originally Posted by jman98 View Post
    The OP should probably view this thread, which is not exactly glowing about using Video to Video Converter for that task.

    https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/365658-Removing-Commercials-with-Video-To-Video-a-Disaster

    If I had to do this I'd use VideoReDo TV Suite, but it's not free.
    I also have VideoReDo. I actually prefer VideotoVideo for MP4 (for speed and simplicity). I have not had a problem so far.
    Unless it's a critical job needing smart rendering.
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  5. Member
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    Yeah, video to video seems great but there's no backward's option nor option to use arrow keys or shift+arrow, etc. like videoLAN to go back and forth quickly. If I am playing through trying to get the end point, I'll likely pass it the first 2-3 times by a few seconds then frames until on the 6th time I get it just right. This is pretty annoying especially considering I have to do thousands of those. I'll have to experiment with vdub tomorrow. Guess there will always be compromises with freeware.
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    Actually, I think I may have just figured out an ingenious solution. I'm going to use drax to edit chapter marks where I want to split and use video-to-video or another program to split all the chapters into separate files.

    I just need a good workflow. I think VLC is probably the best and simplest for navigating a video with hotkeys. Then I'll find some way to copy/paste the timecode into drax to make it easy.
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  7. Member
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    Ugh, turns out you can't have your cake and eat it. I can't get a good timestamp display and you can only go forward frame by frame in VLC, which is dumb. There is an extension for backwards but it's not working. Any other simple open source media player with forwards backwards movement (including frame by frame) and an easy timestamp to copy / paste?
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  8. Originally Posted by mynameisjoseph View Post
    Ugh, turns out you can't have your cake and eat it. I can't get a good timestamp display and you can only go forward frame by frame in VLC, which is dumb.
    It's as much a matter of the file as the player. MPC-HC, one of my favorites, navigates frames perfectly well in i-frame videos like DV, but jumps to keyframes in long-gop media like H.264.

    What may be dumber than expecting this complicated coding challenge to be fully implemented in free software, is not using a real NLE in the first place. They are designed to be able to navigate freely -- at the cost of system resources -- and breaking your files into subclips, even manually, is a lot simpler than cutting and pasting timecode all over the place.
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  9. Most players buffer material ahead of the play marker to aid smooth playback. Going backwards is rarely a player's priority.
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