Cuts only DV AVI video editing recommendations

[johnmeyer]

A friend just digitized 60+ hours of video using her DV camcorder as the encoder. She needs to do simple cuts-only editing to trim the head & tail, and remove bad footage from these tapes. She then needs to encode the result to h.264 MP4 for distribution to relatives. She is using a Windows 11 computer.

I am thinking of simply recommending Virtualdub, but am wondering if any of you have better recommendations. She is very talented and technical, so she can easily learn anything, but I want to avoid subjecting her to multiple hours of learning just to be able to do simple stuff.

Thanks in advance for any recommendations.

[The_Doman]

Virtualdub is also the tool i use for trimming/cutting my DV files before encoding them to other formats.
Sometimes also for joining when capturing in segments.

[Barrythecrab]

Avidemux.

[johnmeyer]

Thanks for the two recommendations. I'm leaning towards the VD which has MP4 encoding built in. However, I'm trying to figure out the best workflow for her. If she has lots of storage space it would be easiest to trim and create new AVI files. No compression loss. I'd then have her fire up Handbrake and drop all the trimmed DV AVI files onto that and batch encode (and probably deinterlace as well). I always found the batch encoding in VD to be difficult, and I also don't know if the h.264 MP4 encoding in VD is as good as Handbrake.

I haven't used AVIDemux in ages. I'll fire that up and see if it might do the trick.

[Alwyn]

If she's nerdy, I'd suggest a cheap NLE such a Magix Movie Studio (not the old Vegas MS). I suspect that, when she gets into it, straight cuts with no titles or anything like that will not cut it. She'll want more. Going the simple Magix route gives her extras such as titles, fades, basic colour correction, easy cropping to 16:9 and batch encoding, as well as a capable integrated DVD/BD authoring and burning function. It also has a multi-movie feature where you can split a large file into separate movies in the same project and batch-export each as a separate file.

FYI, the x264 plugin for VDub2 was updated a couple of days ago. See here:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/414223-VirtualDub2-Fork-By-v0lt#post2740481

You can't easily batch export out of AVIDemux.

For simple chopping up and trimming of DV-AVIs, Scenalyzer is my Go-To.

[_Al_]

I'd suggest a cheap NLE such a Magix Movie Studio

I would suggest the same, definitely, 60 hours/tapes, to spend $50 seems adequate, reasonable.

[johnmeyer]

I am a die-hard Vegas user, and started down that road almost a quarter century ago with Sonic Foundry's Videofactory, the forerunner of Movie Studio. I eventually upgraded to Vegas Pro, and got very involved in that community, with over 4,000 posts in the old Vegas forum.

After the Magix acquisition, I quit upgrading (I do less video editing these days). I didn't realize that the Magix version of MS had changed compared to what Sonic Foundry/Sony were selling. I'll definitely look into it because, as you both say, since she is very technical and amazingly capable, she may want more.

Thanks!