Splitting and joining different content and video formats with new audio

[shrinkage]

Hi, I'm impressed with the guides you have available here. Just used Guardian Knot for hard-encoding subtitles the other day which used VirtualDub in the background and I also repaired a broken avi using VDub as well thanks to your awesome guides. There's a couple that I might be using in the future as well.

I have a project in mind where I'd like to take several clips from various DVD or AVI movies with different content and join them, creating a one hour long new movie collage if you will. I'd like to be able to cut out their respective audios all together and insert wav or mp3 audio clips from my music collection....or better yet, if possible, fade out their respective audio streams in certain spots and then fade in audio files where I want them. My priority is to keep the quality of the video files as the music files will be replacing mostly if not all original audio.

I have looked at several guides using Virtualdub to split and join avi files, usually to split movies in half, and although they don't look too difficult to follow, I'm not sure if that's the route I should be taking for my particular project where I'd be using it to cut out small clips and saving them for future use during the joining process. I'm aware that different movie formats might create some issues joining them all together, so I'm not sure if its possible at all to use both DVD and AVIs in the same project or if this is a case where I would have to stick to one particular format. I'm not above converting as long as I don't loose too much vid quality.

I'd appreciate it if somebody points me to the right how2guide or show me what I need to do.

[lowellriggsiam]

If you used a program that used windows and a timeline like Sony Movie Studio it's a breaze. You can add and split video as well as add or delete audio in an almost intuit fashion.

[shrinkage]

Oops, I can't believe I hadn't noticed the guide How to make a mixed DVD by Baldrick. I'll go check it out and see if it'll solve my answers.

[shrinkage]

If you used a program that used windows and a timeline like Sony Movie Studio it's a breaze. You can add and split video as well as add or delete audio in an almost intuit fashion.

Right on, I'll look into it. I like making mixed cds and hoped there'd be a program that allowed me to edit video the same way.

[redwudz]

I think you'll find that that 'Mixed' guide is referring to DVD source material or at least DVD compliant material. Most times you need to convert all formats to a common one if you want to combine them. For DVD, that would usually be MPEG-2, compliant with the DVD specifications. That can include the framerate, framesize, video and audio formats, bitrates, etc.

So your AVI type files would need to be re-encoded to MPEG if you want to use a DVD for the final format.

For AVI, depends on the format used. AVI is the container name, not a format or codec, and it can contain a lot of different formats, including the Xvid codec, etc. But if you plan to join them, they still usually need to be the same.

[shrinkage]

I think you'll find that that 'Mixed' guide is referring to DVD source material or at least DVD compliant material. Most times you need to convert all formats to a common one if you want to combine them. For DVD, that would usually be MPEG-2, compliant with the DVD specifications. That can include the framerate, framesize, video and audio formats, bitrates, etc.

So your AVI type files would need to be re-encoded to MPEG if you want to use a DVD for the final format.

For AVI, depends on the format used. AVI is the container name, not a format or codec, and it can contain a lot of different formats, including the Xvid codec, etc. But if you plan to join them, they still usually need to be the same.

Yeah, I tried the dvdshrink guide and I was able to chop up the DVD files as well as save them without audio how I wanted. So far so good. I went into Nero Vision and under Make Movie imported the test video and audio clip, finally exporting them as an mpeg just fine. Now that I know what I'm capable of I can add the fade-ins and outs to the audio file in WaveEditor before sending it through Make Movie. I will take note of the clip's length in dvdshrink and use it as a guide when editing the audio.

Thanks for the feedback. Any good guides on how to chop AVIs? I just came across these tips and will see if I can figure them out tomarrow.

I just figured out the best way to edit a file with very few keyframes in Virtualdub without having to recompress the video and making every frame a keyframe.

1. Open the file you want to edit.
2. Select File, File Information and check to see what codec is used.
3. Select Video, Compression and find the video codec that is used.
4. Edit the properties of that codec to make every frame (or every other frame) a keyframe.
5. Select Video, Fast Recompress and save new AVI. This should not affect the quality of the file.
6. Take new AVI and cut anywhere you want.

[redwudz]

I have used the method of making every frame a keyframe to improve editing accuracy, the downside is much larger files. Most of the time now I just convert the files to lossless Lagarith or HuffyUV format. I have used Any Video Converter Pro to convert odd formats (WMV, RMVB) to HuffyUV format, then load that into VirtualDub, filter, edit, then convert to the final format, mostly Xvid. Takes a lot of hard drive space for the process, but not much quality loss.

With VD, note that with fast recompress, you can't use filters. You have to use full processing for them. But fast recompress is great for just cut and paste and quickly converting to a different format. With conversion to a lossless codec you can use filtering, accurate frame editing, then convert back to your final format with little quality loss. But there are more steps involved.

Also with the newer versions of VD, there is a 'Smart Rendering' feature that lets you cut most anywhere and VD just re-encodes at the cut point, saving quite a bit of time. VDs weak point as an editor is with transitions, though it does have a fade filter available. But VD is made as a simple editor and I find the filtering and other features more important than transitions. For those I would use a higher end video editor. I use VD more often for restoration and format conversions.

EDIT: And I may have mentioned it before, but highly compressed formats like Xvid have the keyframes at about 300 frame intervals, so frame accurate cutting is very difficult. That's one reason I convert to lossless formats. And I prefer to use VirtualDub Mod because of it's audio handling, and it doesn't have 'Smart rendering'.