I need Freeware Mpeg2 Editing Tool

[Jeff Kelly]

Hello Folks.

O.K. so I'm quite frustrated now.

I have tried nearly every Tool there is but have not come far.

Premiere can't edit MPeg1/2 Material (quite lame for a $600 Tool)
Tmpgenc hangs every time I try to edit files.

Either there are Demos of commercial Tools whiich have some kind of limit or there are Freeware Tools which don't work very reliably (or not at all)

All I want is to cut Mpeg-2 vbr Material which comes from my DVB-S Card or to make svcds.

Is there any Tool out ther which works (tmpgenc does not for me) ?

Any Help would be apreciated.

regards

Jeff

[Truman]

Try bbMPEG to cut.

[BeTa]

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On 2001-09-04 12:09:02, Jeff Kelly wrote:
Premiere can't edit MPeg1/2 Material (quite lame for a $600 Tool)
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With some trick you can load MPEG2 in Premiere. OTOH, it is not lame. The one who thinks that MPEG2 format is for such editing what Premiere can accomplish is lame.
MPEG2 is supposed to be the end product of your capturing-editing-encoding process.
I understand that you wish only to cut your MPEG2 file. For that, follow the previous post's suggestion: bbMPEG. (it is not an editor, but it will cut your MPEG2 video)

BeTa

[Jeff Kelly]

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With some trick you can load MPEG2 in Premiere. OTOH, it is not lame. The one who thinks that MPEG2 format is for such editing what Premiere can accomplish is lame.
MPEG2 is supposed to be the end product of your capturing-editing-encoding process.
I understand that you wish only to cut your MPEG2 file. For that, follow the previous post's suggestion: bbMPEG. (it is not an editor, but it will cut your MPEG2 video)

BeTa

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I know that in order to get the best possible result you have to use uncompressed video and that many features Premiere has would be wasted on compressed Video.
But more and more Material today comes in compressed form. When I grab Star Trek from my Hauppauge WinTV DVB-S its in MPEG-2, when I rip DVDs I get MPEG-2 etc.

Is it too much to ecpect from an $600 Tool that it supports at least Basic MPEG-1/-2 functionality?

What I want is a tool which supports at least basic szene editing with compressed video.

bbMPEg is quite nice but I can only cut in one-second increments. It would be nice if I could cut/edit with frames. Everything else is not accurate enough.

Regards

Jeff

p.s. maybe I code such a tool myself who knows.

[Lamont Cranston]

You can cut and paste scenes at the mpeg level provding you have told the mpeg encoder to put an I frame at the beginning of each scene change. In TMPGEnc you click on detect scene change which I believe is the default. To get the best results when editing mpeg files you have to cut on the I frame which occurs every 15 frames. By editing on other than I frames {B & P frames} you will have to rerender the final video which may result in severe blocking. You can get a good cut and merge at the I frame but watch the audio track. If there is no silence at the cut you will get a chirp or other unwanted sound at the merge. You can demux the audio, convert it to a wav and edit out the noise with Cool Edit etc. then remux the file. If you wnat to edit on the frame basis best you do it before you make an mpeg.

[Jeff Kelly]

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On 2001-09-05 08:57:53, Lamont Cranston wrote:
You can cut and paste scenes at the mpeg level provding you have told the mpeg encoder to put an I frame at the beginning of each scene change. In TMPGEnc you click on detect scene change which I believe is the default. To get the best results when editing mpeg files you have to cut on the I frame which occurs every 15 frames. By editing on other than I frames {B & P frames} you will have to rerender the final video which may result in severe blocking. You can get a good cut and merge at the I frame but watch the audio track. If there is no silence at the cut you will get a chirp or other unwanted sound at the merge. You can demux the audio, convert it to a wav and edit out the noise with Cool Edit etc. then remux the file. If you wnat to edit on the frame basis best you do it before you make an mpeg.
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Ah and what Tools do you use to cut/edit the mpegs???

[Lamont Cranston]

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On 2001-09-05 10:28:58, Jeff Kelly wrote:
Ah and what Tools do you use to cut/edit the mpegs???
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At the mpeg level I use TMPGEnc. It edits on the I frame (I think) and the audio signal is displayed so you can choose a silent spot, if you lucky lucky to find one.

I have used VideoStudio 5 to edit mpegs but for splice ONLY. VS5 does 'Not' cut on the I frame and will rerender giving severe blocking at the cut.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Lamont Cranston on 2001-09-05 12:31:16 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Lamont Cranston on 2001-09-05 21:55:26 ]</font>

[Anonymous65]

This is the big thing about mpeg, it's not for editing. Encoding a file to mpeg should be the last step before you save or burn the file. If you can't capture to uncompressed AVI or AVI with low compression, then capture to I-frames only mpeg at high bitrate. Then at least, you can do frame accurate editing. After you're done editing, compress the mpeg file to the normal IPB (GOP) compression structure.

[Lamont Cranston]

I agree but if you encode with all I frames how much image degradation to get on a recompress to standard IBP format?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: lamont cranston on 2001-09-07 10:34:21 ]</font>

[Jeff Kelly]

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On 2001-09-05 12:42:02, skittelsen wrote:
This is the big thing about mpeg, it's not for editing. Encoding a file to mpeg should be the last step before you save or burn the file. If you can't capture to uncompressed AVI or AVI with low compression, then capture to I-frames only mpeg at high bitrate. Then at least, you can do frame accurate editing. After you're done editing, compress the mpeg file to the normal IPB (GOP) compression structure.
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As I said earlier I already know this, but the majority of video material I use is already compressed (digital tv, dvd ripping etc) so your suggestion is not an option for me.

My perfect Tool would allow basic editing/cutting (to remove commercials etc.) at I-Frames without recoding, because these one-second increments in Tmpgenc are just not accurate enough.

regards Jeff

[Lamont Cranston]

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My perfect Tool would allow basic editing/cutting (to remove commercials etc.) at I-Frames without recoding, because these one-second increments in Tmpgenc are just not accurate enough.
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Jeff, I looked at TMPGEnc mpeg editing again and you can edit on increments as small as 0.3 seconds. On the Mpeg edit screen use the the left and right arrow keys or the buttons above the play and pause buttons in the right corner of the screen to move the image in 0.3 - 0.4 second increments. TEMGEnc does NOT edit on the I frame.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: lamont cranston on 2001-09-06 04:08:47 ]</font>

[Anonymous65]

In your case, you just have to live with the "sloppy" editing...

[BeTa]

I think there is an AVISynth script that reads MPEG2 and spits out AVI frames.
Did you try that? Then, just load that fake avi into an AVI editor. Of course, you need to reencode... Bad idea, sorry. However, you may be desperate enough to try(?)...
BeTa

[JJamez]

Womble MPEG-VCR does MPEG, frame-accurate editing. It's also the only program I've seen that allows you to edit MPG's - remove sections, cut and paste from the same, or different MPG files then saving WITHOUT reencoding. You can actually even add transition effects between scenes and when saving Womble will only reencode the transitions, nothing else.

http://www.womble.com

Unfortunately it is NOT freeware, but I believe there is a demo on the Womble site.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: JJamez on 2001-09-07 07:25:20 ]</font>