VideoReDo alternatives ?

[Marayong]

I actually meant 'missing important features', which to me qualifies as a 'defect' when looking for an alternative. Or 'deficiency', which is what I meant to write.

"Quickstream fix" could be a trademarked term, so other software would have to call it something else.

Does Tipard work with ts files? Rushed off my feet ATM ... have family over for xmas lunch & arvo today so only sneaking peeks between chores whilst I have a cold drink to cool down. It's cooking outside here.

[Bridgy]

Does Tipard work with ts files?

Yes it seems to do .TS files, but how well it works i don't know because i don't work with files using the TS, MTS, or M2TS formats.

Back in my own HD video days working with and recording AVCHD video for example, i moved the files from the MTS container to MP4 (or MKV) prior to editing just because it was much easier to get better editing and playback support, and back then no TV would play TS, MTS, or M2TS files directly, MP4 was the most common container for playback support, even many TV's did not support MKV.


[Attachment 84248 - Click to enlarge]

[Seeker47]

If it ain't broke why fix it? I use programs that do what I want them to do. For what it's worth I still have have a VHS player, along with a DVD and Bluray player.

DITTO !

I still love my Panny plasmas, which top out at 1080P, and which I plan to stick with until they fail. I have no overriding need to observe very fine hairs and skin pores on people, which the hi-res QLED (or whatever is the pinnacle these days) would reveal. If / When the plasma panels fail, I will take the leap ahead. I just ordered a new router, to replace a 10+ year old one -- largely because the video streaming capability here was very No Bueno. I still use the Pio DVDRs to record some things off-air (satellite), even though this is limited to SD -- a capability nothing else has been able to replace. If any of the game recorders had been able to go there, with the same facility, I would have put that into the mix. So, while not quite qualifying as a Luddite, I need some much more compelling reasons to adopt tech changes.

[Seeker47]

Personally i had never heard of Tipard Software before, but it seems like they also develop other kinds of software too.

How I first -- and previously only -- heard of them was for having put out one of the two or three free player programs I could find and try, for feeding commercial, copyrighted Blu-Ray disc material to my computer monitor, defying the HDCP restrictions you'd get from the known brand-name players like PowerDVD. There was another such player having a suspiciously similar UI, leading me to again think it must be a case of same company behind more than one product name. Can't come up with the other names until I rotate back to a different computer that had these installed. [I think these may be Chinese companies, hence their freely ignoring the strictures of our Big Content consortium.]

EDIT: Did some checking by other means. Besides the Tipard one, those "scofflaw" BR software players were probably either from AiseeSoft or ApeakSoft. The design replication by two of them are telling, though. But they seemed to do the job. I despise these artificial legal barriers placed between very basic computer things that we seek to do.

["Play any Blu-ray disc without limitation
Tipard Blu-ray Player is specially designed to make Blu-ray discs playable on personal computers. With this Blu-ray Player, any Blu-ray disc, file even ISO image can be played on your computer without any limitation."]

Screen shots depicting the Tipard and Aiseesoft ones appear virtually identical . . . . Not a coincidence.

[Bridgy]

The more i use Tipard the more it smells of AiseeSoft, but i also get a hint of VRD in there as well, not a lot, but i feel it there somewhere.

What did bother me was that this company also seems to be involved in producing other software applications not related to video editing at all, and that had me very much doubting the ability of Tipard Ultimate to do much at all, but i have been proven wrong i think.

I just don't like their business model from what i have seen so far, nor do i get a good feeling about the Licensing side either.

The 30 day Trial of the Ultimate version lasts for 1 month, then you need to upgrade to a monthly plan ($18) or a lifetime plan ($56) or a multi user plan ($80) so it is fairly well priced even compared to what VRD cost, and TMPGEnc is even more expensive again.

[Seeker47]

I remembered another of the companies making a desktop software BR player -- as well as various other video apps: Vidmore. Probably another Chinese company with same products under multiple brand names.

And for that Loooonnngg list of editors and converters, VSDC Video Editor Pro. (My suspicion though is that this is going to get lumped in with the crapware . . . ?)
I've used VSDC's converter a few times, and it was decent, although my mainstays in that category remain WinX / Digiarty and Wonderfox.

[Seeker47]

The 30 day Trial of the Ultimate version lasts for 1 month, then you need to upgrade to a monthly plan ($18) or a lifetime plan ($56) or a multi user plan ($80) so it is fairly well priced even compared to what VRD cost, and TMPGEnc is even more expensive again.

All that wide range of functionality showing under "More Tools" (like the purported video watermark remover, etc.) are not part of the suite, but rather separate products for sale ? If the former, and these functions were any good, that would be pretty remarkable.

[Bridgy]

Sneeky buggas, but i am still holding out for some more promising stuff for the Ultimate version.

Just need to find some more time to test it, given i have been trying to get my Wifes old samsung phone files from my laptop onto her new iPhone 16.

[Marayong]

Given ts is just an envelope, if an application opens ts files then the question isn't how well it works with ts but how well it works with what's in the envelope. In the case of my recording hardware, that's mp4. So Tipard opens ts files, has something somewhat akin to quickstream fix (by another name) & it is quick to process & save as long as you select "same as source" (which might be an issue if you have a mp4 in a ts envelope you want to save as mp4 .. how smart is the software?), it has some 4K support (but not perfect). On the other hand, from what's been said it doesn't have frame cutting like VRD and instead it has a rather hit & miss approach for cutting out segments.

On the other hand there is the company itself. It says very little about itself so who what and where? A whois on www.tipard.com indicates the site has been active since 2008 (so it's not new), the domain is registered with godaddy and the domain registrant is a domain privacy company based in Arizona (a common practice), both of which indicate the company is not Chinese and possibly based somewhere in the English speaking world, Singapore or Japan (where godaddy has it's markets). For myself, when I purchase software I like to know a bit about the company. Their privacy page also indicates they record the IP address & other personal information of users. Not uncommon and what they do is far less than say facebook. So they want to know about you and where you are from etc, but decline to return the courtesy. Even the lack of a postal address or PO box is a concern. Even facebook provides that. Archive.org has their site back to 2009, where they were just as coy about their location. Prior to 2008 the domain was a norweigian website selling bengal cats, which evidently let the domain name lapse. Tipard.net, which echoes the com site, dates back to 2008. The about page from the 2008 site 404s, so no help there. The use of english on the 2008 page indicates the author was not from an English speaking background - lots of poor grammar & spellings. At that time the company provided software to convert apple format AV files into formats playable on a windows pc.

A few tidbits.

[Bridgy]

Tipard has a really bad cutting tool, similar to SmartMediaCutter, by this i mean that it goes about cutting frames completely different to how VRD and LosslessCut does it, but most likely it does cut accurately, and apparently it can do it between keyframes.

Same as Source is the term used in other Smart Cutting tools, with Tipard it certainly works very well, way better and more accurately than TMPGEnc Smart Renderer 6, which costs US$70 to buy.

[Bridgy]

BTW, Merry Christmas to you all, and have a great new year, and let up hope that VRD Pro stays alive and active for at least another year.

[Marayong]

Merry xmas & NY to everyone as well.

As for Tipard, going by Bridgy's reports, it seems to be the best of a worst bunch for an all-in-one replacement for VRD. Note the emphasis on all-in-one. The use of two separate tools, losslesscut & handbrake is the best of the VRD alternatives, but doesn't provide an all-in-one tool.

[imkira3]

Merry xmas & NY to everyone as well.

As for Tipard, going by Bridgy's reports, it seems to be the best of a worst bunch for an all-in-one replacement for VRD. Note the emphasis on all-in-one. The use of two separate tools, losslesscut & handbrake is the best of the VRD alternatives, but doesn't provide an all-in-one tool.

I agree, it sounds like the only thing lacking is a frame-based timeline system. Can the program be themed? Perhaps we could fix that with a custom theme. If it has a theme system as advanced as Potplayers, and there are commands to move several frames at once or maybe a way to run several one-second skips in a row, you get me? I edit my potplayer theme a lot actually, it all started when I wanted to bring back the 30-second skip feature when right-clicking on the prev/next button. Anyway, between wrapping presents and last-minute baking I won't have much time to look into it until the 26th, but if the program can be themed, I might actually try and make it look like VRD

[Marayong]

It's possible it is skinnable, but I saw no such evidence when I checked out the website. And skinning tends to mostly be a feature of open source and/or free software. The developers of proprietary software tend not to allow that sort of thing. Potplayer is proprietary but it's freeware.

In the end, the best alternative to VRD is VRD, given the activation server is back online at the old address - as long as you have a valid licence. If you are fortunate to have bought a licence whilst VRD was still in development, great. Otherwise given that everything is for sale online, maybe trawl the net looking for someone selling a no longer required (legitimate) licence.

[Bridgy]

Hi everyone, can i please ask you to hit the link below to read some more info regarding Tipard Ultimate.

It gets too complicated for me to post up info into this Thread as well as into my own Thread offering my own alternatives to VRD with my test results.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/416487-Alternatives-for-VideoReDo-TV-Suite-with-Te...ts#post2761446

I think, as a suggestion to others, that you should install some of these VRD alternatives and test them out with your own files, especially given that some are totally free, and others offer a time or feature limited Trial.

Testing software yourselves is the only way for anyone to really know if these tools are what they say they are, do what they say they can do, and see if they are applicable to you and your needs.

I know that while i still have VRD Pro i really have no need for anything else, but given that i don't want to rely on what others have to say about alternate software, i am always prepared to try them out myself.

Now that i discovered Tipard Ultimate, i think that it just might be very useful to me to use for the additional features that it offers once i have put my video files thru VRD, and from what i have seen so far now that i discovered the other features, i really believe that this would definitely be my top choice as a real all in one tool to replace VRD with if i ever lost it.

I just need to get my head around the stupid lame Cutting Tool, or i would use LosslessCut just for cutting and Smart Rendering before importing into Tipard, especially given LosslessCut is free.

BTW, i have not found anywhere in Tipard that allows you to modify the User Interface, but i will look into it, because i don't really like the color scheme of Interface as is is right now.

[Marayong]

A lot of those extra features are relatively straight forward things for which open source software has existed for many tears, decades even. Of course, not all in the one package ... then again, ffmpeg does a LOT and any GUI that ports all of ffmpeg's features would be an impressive collection of tools.

I'm sure you've mentioned it before, but I'm preoccupied (it's xmas day after all), but I assume this software can snip frames out from inside a video .. as distinct from just the start and end and is there a minimum number of frames that can be excised? VRD can excise a single frame, which is the gold standard.

Still, it sounds like the last remaining issue with Tipard is who the heck are there? What country are they based in? If you are going to get a licence, that should entitle you to ask that question. What legal jurisdiction are they in? That can have impacts for users. What country they are from has implications for customer service, viz any possible language barriers for trying to get complicated questions answered or bugs/glitches/faults resolved - it's one thing dealing with someone who speaks the same language as you (as a 1st language) whilst trying to get a fault rectified .. its very much another thing to have the same fault rectified whilst dealing with someone who uses google translate to understand what you are saying.

Back onto xmas prep duties .. I was just printing something out when this popped up. Honest!

[Bridgy]

My wife is working until 3pm today, our Son lives in Melbourne, our Daughter is on the Gold Coast for Xmas, but our extended Family gathering starts after 3pm today at my brothers home, will be about 40 or so people attending.

I am on my laptop doing stuff until then.

A lot of those extra features are relatively straight forward things for which open source software has existed for many tears, decades even. Of course, not all in the one package ... then again, ffmpeg does a LOT and any GUI that ports all of ffmpeg's features would be an impressive collection of tools.

Sorry but i don't know of any, or many free open source tools that do a lot of those features shown in my screenshot of Tipard, those kinds of features are most often only packaged inside a particular software suite, and you will not get a Software program with all of those features for free, but they seriously need to do a better job of the cutting tool, and offer a frame based timeline like VRD, or at least the same as LosslessCut.

Yes you can trim out multiple segments in Tipard, the same as Avidemux, BUT you need to work out how to do the dam thing, and even though i have trimmed out files, i still get tripped up with how the cutting tool works, and why they don't do it the same as VRD or LosslessCut is beyond me.

Also, personally i am not concerned about who Tipard is as a company, the fact that they have been around for many years, and the fact that they have a vast array of Software is enough for me to buy a license because it is cheap for what it offers, even if it is just for Testing purposes, for me it is still worth it, and i will already have it if VRD Pro ever goes belly up.

[Marayong]

I meant tools that individually do the things in the extended options ... there is software to play videos (d'oh), software to rotate videos, convert to gifs . But not one software that does it all.

[Bridgy]

Well i have not seen very many open source stand alone tools that does a lot of those features individually, then again i probably wouln't bother with them if i needed to install a whole bunch of them.

For the cost of Tippard Ultimate at the moment, it has way more features than VRD (which is not an "All in One" tool anyway) and Tipard would be what i call an "All in One" application, especially as it does Audio enhancements too, but as mentioned earlier, does it do the things that VRD can do as good, or better, and that is what i am interested in as well.

Ok so i just now finally worked out the cutting tool properly (i think) but in a very clumsy and not so professional manner, and after i cut 3 segments from the 4k/60p HEVC source file i exported to HEVC MP4 (Same as Source) using the settings that i had used the other day, and it bumped my bitrate from 41.0Mbps in the Source File up to 72.3Mbps, which is wierd, so back to the test bench again tomorrow.

Cheers, got to get ready, and i swear i will not be back here today.

[Seeker47]

I never got a direct answer to my post #367, above.

Now that i discovered Tipard Ultimate, i think that it just might be very useful to me to use for the additional features that it offers once i have put my video files thru VRD, and from what i have seen so far now that i discovered the other features.

A lot of those extra features are relatively straight forward things for which open source software has existed for many years.

i don't know of any, or many free open source tools that do a lot of those features shown in my screenshot of Tipard, those kinds of features are most often only packaged inside a particular software suite, and you will not get a Software program with all of those features

I meant tools that individually do the things in the extended options ...

Tippard Ultimate at the moment, it has way more features than VRD (which is not an "All in One" tool anyway) and Tipard would be what i call an "All in One" application, especially as it does Audio enhancements too, but as mentioned earlier, does it do the things that VRD can do as good, or better, and that is what i am interested in as well.

But you both seem to be indicating that that whole gallery of functions shown under "More Tools" is indeed included within this single Tipard program ?

it sounds like the last remaining issue with Tipard is who the heck are they? What country are they based in? If you are going to get a licence, that should entitle you to ask that question. What legal jurisdiction are they in? That can have impacts for users. What country they are from has implications for customer service

That can matter. A great example of this is my file manager program, that I rely upon daily -- a looks-alike, works-alike lineal descendant of XTree (a file manager going back to the DOS days), that I have used for well over 25 years, possibly well over 30. Over the span of that time, I may have paid for version upgrades once or twice at most, which is very rare in itself. You wouldn't expect most of these programs to be around for that long and still be under active development. But I just reported a longstanding bug to the developer, who replied that a fix is in the works ! Again, uncommon under the circumstances. However, in this case the developer is known to be U.S. based.

[Marayong]

I've only read the reviews, not actually looked at the software, so I could be wrong (I am often accused of that, but I am autistic so it's par for the course) ... but ... my understanding is the extra tools are only available for additional purchase (individually? collectively? I dunno) and not with the basic package.

Ahh ... Xtree. That brings back memories. I used it in the DOS era back in the 80s and into the 90s. Moved onto Xtree Gold for a while until Win95 came out.

[Bridgy]

Guys, if you want me to respond to questions about Tipard or any other alternative that i have tested so far, please go to my own thread and post it there, this thread just seems to be dealing with general banter which mostly is about stuff that i don't work with, and given that i am currently testing Tipard, which nobody else has even bothered to do, that is where my answers to any questions about Tipard will be posted, not in here.

@ Seeker, i will respond to your question here.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/416487-Alternatives-for-VideoReDo-TV-Suite-with-Test-Results

Just tested the video reverser tool, details in the link above.

[Bridgy]

Does anyone here know if VRD is still using the Mainconcept Encoder for it's Software based Encoding, i know it was years ago, but not sure if Dan moved over to the x.264 (AVC) and x.265 (HEVC) encoders later on, i suspect he didn't because if used inside commercial editing software then the software developer would need to pay for it.

I personally never liked Hardware based encoding because it is just not up to the same quality as using x.264 and x.265 encoders, and Mainconcept had it's own issues as well, but i still used VRD for encoding to other formats simply because of how the Software was developed.

Doing Smart Cutting and Smart Rendering in VRD was ok because the files were not recoded, except for a few frames around the Cuts.

[badyu17]

Does anyone here know if VRD is still using the Mainconcept Encoder for it's Software based Encoding, i know it was years ago, but not sure if Dan moved over to the x.264 (AVC) and x.265 (HEVC) encoders later on, i suspect he didn't because if used inside commercial editing software then the software developer would need to pay for it.

I personally never liked Hardware based encoding because it is just not up to the same quality as using x.264 and x.265 encoders, and Mainconcept had it's own issues as well, but i still used VRD for encoding to other formats simply because of how the Software was developed.

Doing Smart Cutting and Smart Rendering in VRD was ok because the files were not recoded, except for a few frames around the Cuts.

I used v6 recently for some quick cut, and there's 'x264 encoder' in the log, so I guess they did change it. I know that for V5 they had their own version of reference encoder and Mainconcept if you used version 4 engine. That's for smart rendering, I don't know what they used for full recode.

[Bridgy]

I used v6 recently for some quick cut, and there's 'x264 encoder' in the log, so I guess they did change it. I know that for V5 they had their own version of reference encoder and Mainconcept if you used version 4 engine. That's for smart rendering, I don't know what they used for full recode.

I am still not sure to be honest, i was just told that if they used the x264 and x265 encoders that they would be charging a lot more for VRD.

[Seeker47]

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/405085-Womble-MultiMedia-Out-Of-Business/page2#post2762517

[godai]

i use that one always. lol. smart cutter. prefer interface. it close many times. videoredo kinda more pro. thing in my case.

[dsteinschneider]

If anyone wants the 6.93.7.836a Beta installer i can provide my copy.

I'm new to the forum. I've been using VRD for many years and have been very happy with the last stable V6 TV Suite version but would love to be able to convert to HEVC instead of AVC.

I have about 600 WTV recorded movie files that are rather large MPEG-2 high bitrate files. I'm hoping converting them to HEVC will make bring them down under 5GB.

Many thanks if you can provide the above beta installer somehow.

[Bridgy]

I am using the Pro version, if you are not using the Pro version then my installer will be no good for you.

What version are you running ?

below is my link to the 6.93.7.836a Beta installer that i have been using for 3 years or so.

https://icedrive.net/s/kRzTQx8xwviybVY3YGvjRaRi5AvF

[johns0]

Time to shutdown this thread,getting too old.