Newbie needs advice on an editor.

[dlc16]

Total beginner here. I'd like to trim and crop some video files I have. (They're many different formats.) I tried out iMovie on my Mac, but the result was a file way too big. It was a five minute, 70 mb video. I trimmed thirty seconds off the end. After saving, the file was then 2 GB! I tried all the other formats that save as smaller files (for cd-rom, emailing, etc.) but the loss in quality was just too much. Basically, I want to trim and crop the files and have them be a reasonable size without losing quality. What's the best way to go about this? Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

[thecoalman]

Basically anytime you convert a video you will lose quality and the file size will change. How much for both depends on what you have, what you are going too and even the software you are using.

Ideally you want an editor that only reencodes the video that you have changed such as where you have added a transition. To do that you have to match the output (specifically the bitrate and resolution) to the input and need an editor that supports it.

Ulead Video Studio is one that will do this with MPEG and DV-AVI... not sure about DIVX or some of the other compressed formats like WMV....

If you are more specific about the types of files you are using someone will be able to provide some more specific advice.