cropping and resizing for web

[deepdesign]

i have converted my dvd to an mp4 using nero recoder

however now i need to compress it and crop it up into shorter clips ready for our website.

can someone please recommend programs

many thanks

[hech54]

If you are cropping it....you're better starting off from scratch IMO. You jumped the gun on the MP4 convert.

[redwudz]

Or do you mean by 'cropping' to edit or cut? Cropping usually refers to changing the framesize.

Highly compressed formats like MP4 are a poor choice for editing. But if you must, try VirtualDub or VD Mod and cut on the keyframes, then save out the clips without re-encoding with Direct stream copy. If you encode it again, you will lose even more quality.

It's usually better to do the editing/cutting/cropping in the source format, if possible, then re-encode only once to the final format.

[deepdesign]

ah yes you are correct i need it edit and cut!!

currently it is 500mb however i need to get it down to seveal say 3/4mb or even lower.

i want cut it up into a series of smaller clips (2mins) rather that one huge 80 mins

will virtualdub do this???

[redwudz]

I tried opening a Nero digital demo file with VD and didn't have any luck, but I don't have a proper codec for that format. Maybe with CoreAVC or 3ivx installed.

But I saw this on Wikipedia:

Nero Digital also does not ship its codecs as stand-alone DirectShow or VfW modules, preventing them from being used for general-purpose video editing. The product is not bundled with a video editor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Digital

Better to edit them before encoding to ND.

[Baldrick]

You can try avidemux.

[deepdesign]

thanks guys i will try that