want to edit while maintaining the highest quality video

[seand]

I have a divx movie that I would like to edit (take scenes out, etc..), and then burn to DVD. The problem I am running into is that after editing in Pinnacle Studio, the file that is rendered afterward sucks. I've tried every format that Studio has to offer (doesn't work well with Divx codec). I've even gone so far as render the movie back onto a DV tape (supposedly that's how you maintain the highest quality) but still with no success. The divx movie is nearly flawless as far as quality is concerned, but I can't even come close with the new movie. Any info would help. I have virtualdub, tmpegenc plus, studio 7, and arcsoft showbiz.

[Faceman101]

Divx to MPG2 will never look as good as the original Divx file. What you could do is edit your movie and export the edited file to Uncompressed AVI (or HuffYUV to save space). Then encode into MPG2.

[seand]

Thanks face, but I don't know what program i can edit in and save as an uncompressed avi. Studio only renders compressed files. Tried Ulead Videostudio with no success as well. Any suggestions program wise?

[Pratticus]

Virtual Dub or Nandub will export an uncompressed AVI, note tho that for 2 hours of video you are probably looking at in excess of 50Gb.

[EricB]

Seand

Encode the file to DVD format with TMPGENc then use MPEG Tools in TMPGENc to cut out the sections you don't want. You just load multiple copies of the same file into Merge & Cut to get each segment you want.

The sections won't re-encode so the final copy will be as good as it gets.

[djmattyb]

Or even better yet - edit in VirtualDub and then encode to DVD format. That way you won't be encoding the stuff you are going to cut out anyways.