TMPGenc editing problems - good program to edit MPEG2?

[Zogg]

I'm capturing with an ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon, and been doing a lot of test captures with different bitrate settings in MPEG2. Most of the video I've captured is pretty good. However, editing is a problem.

I have been trying to use TMPGenc to edit out the commercials, but the editing process under MPEG Tools seems imprecise. For example, one time the end of the clip is at 6:38, then I try again and it's 9 seconds later. The time keeps changing! And if I have reencoded the video with TMPGenc into several clips and then use the MPEG Tools to combine them into one file, the transitions are not very good, as it usually chops off the last bit of a clip and starts the next.

Now that I think I have settled on the settings for my AIW, all I want to do is to top and tail, cut out the commercials, and combine the clips into one file. What would be a GOOD program to do this with? Thanks.

[tana]

The best program I found for editing MPEG2, ie cutting out commercials and joining the clips together is M2-edit Pro. It's very nice, easy to use and very accurate, up to 1/100th of a second. You can download a trial version at www.mediaware.com.au. Keep in mind M2-edit Pro is extremely expensive. I believe they also have another version called MyFlix XE that also does MPEG2 editing, and is a lot cheaper, but I haven't used it so I'm not sure what the degree of accuracy is.


-Tana-

[Zogg]

I had previously discounted M2-Edit because of the price tag. I did just download the demo of MyFlix-XE, the stripped down version, and it seems to work pretty well. It costs a lot less but it's still kind of high for just an editor.

Any other less expensive suggestions?

[tana]

Not that I know of. I've tried several different methods including converting the mpeg2 into divx format then using virtual dub to cut and merge, but the end results are the same as TMPGenc, very unaccurate. I did try Ulead Video Studio and you can even cut to a particular frame, but when I tried to save the merged clips, it wanted to re-encode the entire video, which would've been a pain the in rear and taken forever, and I thought it was cumbersome to use. Of course I could've been doing it wrong, but I still don't think it's easier or any better than M2-edit or MyFlix XE. Maybe someone else has tried a different program out there that's accurate and easy to use.



Tana