What free software can I use to easily split DIVX movies?

[raid517]

What free software can I use to easily split DIVX movies? You see I have digital satelite TV and have recorded some music shows for my niece, but I want to split the songs up into individual tracks/artists etc so that they can be arranged into albums.

Does anybody have any suggestions? I am not looking for anything you have to be a brain surgeon to use. I mean it seems like a simple thing to want to do to just split files into sperate parts (like you can do with real film). So anything simple and fast to use would be cool.

Also, does anyone know of anything that will batch encode WMV files to Divx?

I have a tone of WMV files I want to convert. I tried Dr Divx, the problem there is it will only let me select one job at a time, which is a pain in the ass. I would rather just drag and drop maybe 20 WMV files at a time and have something quickly do the encoding.

All input is welcome.

GJ

EDIT: I just did an experiment and I noticed that WMV 9 files seem to be a lot more efficient than Divx, with a much smaller file size for an equivalent quality. Is there anything I can use to encode Mpeg 2 files into WMV? I would be interested in trying this.

[housepig]

Virtualdub can do your splitting with ease - just remember to check "Direct Stream Copy" under the Video menu.

[Ripper2860]

Windows Media Encoder is free and allows AVI/MPEG to WMV conversion.

[raid517]

Right well I looked at virtual dub and it seems very complex. All I want to do is toggle to a certain frame then split the movie at that point. But looking at virtualdub, I can't figure out for the life of me how to do that? (Another thing is that the toggle function seems hideously slow. It takes forever to move from one point in the movie to the next. I have a fast enough machine (Barton 2800@2.5GHZ with 512MB RAM)) so I can't see why there should be a reason for it to be that slow.

One other small disadvantage of virtualdub is that it can't encode WMV files, so batch encoding the several hundred I have is definately out.

Again any input anyone can offer would be very much appreciated.

GJ

[raid517]

Well that's good, windows media encoder keeps crashing whenever I try to open a MPEG 2 encoded file. Sigh... what a bummer... I tried opening divx files with it and it keeps crashing with them too.

GJ

[Ripper2860]

You may need to D/L and install the WMP Media Codecs from MS. Give it a try ...

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/format/codecdownload.aspx

MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and DivX all work for me.

BTW -- what OS are you running?

[raid517]

Erm... but I already have Windows XP pro... But anyway, I will give it a try...

GJ

[Ripper2860]

I have XP pro sp1 as well and installed them.

You still should download/install the addtional codecs pak. It solves a lot of issues and most importantly to me allows TMPGEnc to read WMV files for conversion.

Not saying it'll solve your problem, but it is something that does not hurt and does help other matters.

[raid517]

Well it didn't help. Thanks anyway.

If I try to convert MPEG2 (since doing so would be handly for a number of TV shows I want to keep too) to WMV I get an error message saying:

The Source does not have a frame rate of 30 frames per second. Therefore it is not possible to apply the inverse telecine filter to the source.

Any clue what this means?

GJ

[djworkit]

EDIT: I just did an experiment and I noticed that WMV 9 files seem to be a lot more efficient than Divx, with a much smaller file size for an equivalent quality. Is there anything I can use to encode Mpeg 2 files into WMV? I would be interested in trying this.

I don't know about you... but when I first did captures (from VHS), I spent days (literally like 4 days) taking a 4min clip of uncompressed AVI and compressing it to all the codecs I could find (that were free anyways), and settled on DivX (5.1.1). It came down to WM9 and DivX (3-pass mpeg4's) and I could swear it took more for the WM9 video to match the quality of the DivX file. (Subjectively, of course, a WM9 video file needed to be almost 1.5x the size of the DivX file to look about the same as the DivX file. Could be the VHS, could be the DivX decompressor, I don't really know. I do know the DivX player (that comes with the codec package) takes a hell of a lot of processor usage (compared to anything else I tried out... when the performance settings were pushed up all the way). I should add that when played through Win Media Player as well as WinAmp, the DivX files didn't look as good.

Just my 2-cents. I only bring it up cause I spent days encoding the same video clip to different formats so that I could decide how the rest of my video was going to be stored.

[Ripper2860]

Give this a try ...

Don't start processing at the end of the WME wizard. When you go back to the main WME screen, select PROPERTIES/PROCESSING and de-select INVERSE TELECINE (IVTC) selection if it is checked. Click APPLY and then start ENCODING by clicking on the START ENCODING button

IVTC takes 30FPS video and converts it to 24FPS film. If it ain't 30FPS, it can't be IVTC'ed.

It may be the profile you selected has IVTC enabled.

[RabidDog]

dr divx has the ability to "defer job for batch processing"... use this to set all your bits and bobs and then encode many jobs overnight s'easy.
virtualdub is easy to use .. set direct stream copy audio & video then mark sections as wanted, save as...s'easy too.

[raid517]

Well it wasn't checked, so why I wonder was it bitching about it?

@RabidDog I will consider what you said thanks. Though a direct example of how to split a file would be appreciated.

@djworkit, I don't know. I'm open to suggestions about what the best codec is. Lot's of people swear by Divx, although personally I have never been madly impressed by it.

What interests me is the maximum audio and visual quality for the smallest file size.

Less important to me is speed - as I can happily leave a job for as long as it takes.

Sometimes people's own individual bias gets in the way of a fair assessment of this.

GJ

[raid517]

There is just one problem with DR Divx. Although it sounds fine in theory - you should try adding 200 WMV files to it and then see how practical it is to do.

It surely isn't much fun.

GJ

[djworkit]

@djworkit, I don't know. I'm open to suggestions about what the best codec is. Lot's of people swear by Divx, although personally I have never been madly impressed by it.

What interests me is the maximum audio and visual quality for the smallest file size.

GJ

That was my reason for checking out all the types of video as well (balance between quality and file size), except I didn't care as much about sound (b/c the sound captured by the camcorder stunk anyways). You can do whatever you want with the sound, as DivX deals just with the video anyways.

I WILL be testing out codecs again when I work with higher resolution video, so I don't mean to make a sweeping generalization . For VHS, DivX worked well (actually smoothing out noise picked up from the VHS) and keeping a small size (technically you are changing the original though, which is technically a bad thing). I played with various VBR's, going up too 3,000 if I remember correctly... but there wasn't really much of a difference from its default 700 or 710. If I had all the disk space I ever wanted, I would stick with mpeg2 probably, because I have a feeling this "smooting out" look may be unwanted in higher-resolution video (I have yet to try though). The clip I tested this all out with was a 5.?GB uncompressed AVI, about 85MB DivX, and about 350MB in Mpeg2... so my personal preference ended up being DivX.

If you try the mpeg4 codecs, be sure to use the multipass settings


And you are probably right about Dr Divx (however, I didn't use it, so I don't know). I used the encoder through Virtual Dub (but I haven't tried any batch conversions with it).