Edit MPEG or AVI - which is better?

[dollyp]

Hello

I've been moving my home videos to my computer using a DVD recorder and converting the VOB files to MPEG with Womble MPEG Video Wizard. Now I want to start to edit them before putting the result back on DVD.

From what I read on this site and others, each conversion has the potential for degrading the content and therefore it would seem better for me to edit with the MPEG Video Wizard as it only recodes the joins. However this program is not, I find, the easiest to work with and appears mighty expensive in its full DVD edition (I am in the free trial period).

What I am enquiring about is would I be better to go for a program such as Ulead Video Studio or Premier Elements or would the recoding to and from a different format (I assume both these use AVI) lead to an unacceptable loss of quality?

[thecoalman]

What I am enquiring about is would I be better to go for a program such as Ulead Video Studio or Premier Elements or would the recoding to and from a different format (I assume both these use AVI) lead to an unacceptable loss of quality?

Not sure about Premiere but set up properly Ulead won't reencode either. If your source files are MPEG you want to leave them MPEG and use an editor that won't reencode. I believe TDA is another application that allows for minor edits that won't reencode either.

Ulead s two consumer applications are Video Studio and Movie Factory. Both will go from capture to burn however VS has many more editing options and MF has more authoring options. For simple cuts and transitions take a look at MF.

[AlanHK]

Womble MPEG-VCR is pretty cheap and works very cleanly. Keeps sync and doesn't re-encode frivolously.

[jman98]

Womble MPEG-VCR is pretty cheap and works very cleanly. Keeps sync and doesn't re-encode frivolously.

I second this recommendation. VideoReDo is also nice, but I prefer MPEG-VCR for editing standard definition video. Do remember with MPEG-VCR that what you need to do to edit is like in this example. Let's say you record a 30 minute TV show (this is how TV is in the USA by the way) that is like this:
2 minutes of show
2 minutes of commercials
7 minutes of show
2 minutes of commercials
9 minutes of show
2 minutes of commercials
6 minutes of show including final credits
You want to join the 2 + 7 + 9 + 6 minute segments into one 24 minute file. What you have to do is set the beginning and ending point of each segment, copy these segments into the clipboard and then join them together. Do NOT try to remove the commercials from the whole video. MPEG-VCR will let you do it, but it will re-encode the output. It won't re-encode if you join segments together into a new file.