Basic MPEG Editing (Removing Commercials)

[CaZeek]

Hello,
I've searched these forums for a while now. I checked many programs, and can't seem to find what I'm looking for. I wanted to know if there is a free program out there that is good for removing commercials in MPEG-2 format. I don't want to re-encode the entire file or anything, I just want to simply edit out the commercials. Womble was perfect, but I'd rather not spend $120 to register for something as seemingly basic as what I'm looking for. Thanks for the replies! please

[FOO]

The only free one I know of that sort of works is
TMPGenc cut & merge.

[trhouse]

You might want to try Tpmgenc. It is known as a good encoder but it has a section called "MPEG Tools" which allows cuts and merges. The freeware MPEG2 encoder function will stop working in 30 days but the MPEG Tools will still work. The cost should you want it fully functional is only about $44 for the download.

[CaZeek]

First of all, thank you for replying.

I'm trying TMPGENC merge and cut again now. The way I'm going about it is adding the file once, setting the in point at the beginning, and the out point right before the first commercial. Then I add the file again, set the in point at the end of the first commercial break and the out right before the next commercial break, etc. I had it all in order, and I let it run for 2 minutes, and not even 1% showed up. Am I going about this the wrong way? If not, this will take probably about a day for each episode (ESPN Playmakers if anyone's interested) to finish. Let me know if there's anything I can do differently. Thanks again.

[Tommyknocker]

AviSynth is free, cuts like a scalpel (surgically).

[FirefoxV]

Don't expect speed from TMPGEnc, but the results are worth the wait as most people on this site will agree with. This freeware or it's bigger brother TMPGEnc Plus produces pleasing results.

[Tommyknocker]

Thank you, Thank you very much - Elvis

And you really believe Elvis coined this phrase? Your generation is even more far gone than I once believed.

[trhouse]

This is not a fast process. I copied down some information while I was doing a movie about 1 hour 30 minutes long. Here is some of that information about how long it took to process after all the edits were done.

CPU usage: about 15% ( Pentium 4, 2.53 GHz )
Producing video stream: about 5 minutes
Producing audio stream: about 2 minutes
Multiplexing: about 15 minutes
Rewriting header: about 15 minutes.

It appears this is a very disk drive intensive process since CPU usage is very nominal.

[BobK]

TMPGEnc DVD Author will let you edit mpg2.

[gcgreen]

I have had trouble cutting with TMPGEnc Plus. I was cutting a captured MPEG2 file into several parts. Audio was almost always out of sync after the 2nd or 3rd cut. To solve problem, I searched this forum and used VirtualDub Mod to find the I-frames and cut there. This yeilded no audio sync problems.

Hope this helps.

[CaZeek]

I've tried VDub.. problem is the audio has this weird high pitch frequency sound when I load the mpg into it. I also don't want to re-encode the episodes. I also tried tmpgenc author, but it only saves in vob files.. no? I also just tried using tmpgenc again, and I waited 10 minutes without a single percent completed. I don't think that's going to work

[Tommyknocker]

Trust me. Look into the AviSynth thing. You can use TMPGEnc or Virtual Dub with it, if you like. Free, my man, free.

[Gazorgan]

Serious editing requires multiple disk drives. Source on 1 drive and desitnation on another. 1 GB of RAM helps also :P

When I make a DVDR image, it takes 2 minutes (4.3 GB) going from Disk D to Disk E. If I go from D to D it takes 11 minutes. Same files.

[CaZeek]

I downloaded AVI Synth, but to be quite honest, I have no idea what I even downloaded. I see some text files, no program or anything. Is it a plug-in for tmpgenc?

[Tommyknocker]

Here ya go!

[trhouse]

I think I am doing it differently. I add the file, do my cuts. Save the file under a new name like Video1. Add the original file, do other cuts. Save the file under another name like Video2. So I have three files total including the original. I then add the Video1 and Video2 files and create the merge.

[Tommyknocker]

Sounds like extra work.

[trhouse]

It is. I am not editing commercials but making family movie albums. It helps to have all the clips separated so I can custom merge them depending on who the recipient will be for the dvd.

[FOO]

1. Avisynth will not edit mpeg files.
2. The comment about using Vdub was just to find the correct cut points,
not to edit. Vdub will not edit mpeg

Edit means edit. It doesn't mean convert to to raw video, edit , and re-encode.

[Tommyknocker]

Foo, I usually agree with you most of the time, but I take exception with you on this topic. AviSynth does edit MPEG. Check out this guide, and you will see. Virtual Dub mod will edit mpeg files and frameserve them another encoder like TMPGEnc. Please reconsider your last post, my esteemed colleague.

[CaZeek]

Hey,

Could you possibly give me an example of how I would go about getting rid of a commercial with AVI Synth. Let's say for example, the video was 1000 frames long. Commercial break 1 ran from frame 100-200 and commercial break 2 ran from 700-800. What exactly would I do? Sorry that I'm ignorant about AVISynth, but at least I'm honest

Thanks!

[Tommyknocker]

Hey,

Could you possibly give me an example of how I would go about getting rid of a commercial with AVI Synth. Let's say for example, the video was 1000 frames long. Commercial break 1 ran from frame 100-200 and commercial break 2 ran from 700-800. What exactly would I do? Sorry that I'm ignorant about AVISynth, but at least I'm honest

Thanks!

AVISource("d:cazeek.avi") 
Trim(0,99)+Trim(201,699)+Trim(801,1000)

[trhouse]

This was on the AViSynth web site,

"When is it a good idea to use AviSynth?
Not all tasks are equally easy to do in AviSynth. In general AviSynth makes it very easy to adjust the look of your video, and doing fast and easy editing. In general it's not easy to use AviSynth cutting your videos, or doing advanced post-procesing. For that it is much better to use programs like Adobe Premiere and Adobe AfterEffects. A very good use for AviSynth is however to prepare your video before you cut it in one of these programs, and adjust color, remove noise, crop / resize.

In general AviSynth is a very good tool when having to compress video. Many filters are written specificly for tasks regarding video pre-processing when compressing or recompressing video. There are many well written plugins to help you make your movie more compressible, reduce noise, adjust color and resize your source material. And because AviSynth works as a frameserver, you often do not need a temporary file before you compress it."

I went to the guide but could find not much on editing mpegs. There are some links which mention mpeg's but some of the links are dead or lead to a German language site which defaults to a list, but clicking on the items on the list yields nothing readable.

[SeeingMole]

FOO hit right on.

What cazeek meant by "editing" is simple merge and cut WITHOUT re-encoding.

Avisynth and VirtualdubMod won't do it.

TMPGEnc can, but it sometimes has problems with certain non standard MPEG files.

Another MPEG2 cut/trim editor I know of is MyFlix XE but the full version cost US$ 180. They do have a limited demo available for download though.

[SeeingMole]

AVISource("d:cazeek.avi") 
Trim(0,99)+Trim(201,699)+Trim(801,1000)

Umm.. he has an MPG file as source.....

[Tommyknocker]

Fine:

LoadPlugin("MPEG2DEC.dll")
MPEGSource("C:yourfile.MPG")
Trim(0,99)+Trim(201,699)+Trim(801,1000)

Boy, I smell a "goat rope"coming on.

[trhouse]

Not sure what is going on at the moment. I tried to locate the mpeg2dec plug-in ( there are two, the original by M. Born and mpeg2dec2 modified by Tom Barry goes to a dead link ). The M. Born link leads to an unreadable file at least on my browser the way it is set up, but there does seem to be file there. We will figure this out!

[SeeingMole]

Fine:

LoadPlugin("MPEG2DEC.dll")
MPEGSource("C:yourfile.MPG")
Trim(0,99)+Trim(201,699)+Trim(801,1000)

Boy, I smell a "goat rope"coming on.

Then what? Load the .AVS file into an MPEG encoder and encode?

The question was about cut and merge WITHOUT re-encoding.....

Get it now?

[Tommyknocker]

No, SeeingMole, I do not get it. I am not your kid, do not use that tone with me. I probably have corns older than you.

[SeeingMole]

Helping out is a good thing, but helping out with bad info will only confuse matters more.....

So, shall we start agreeing that when editing/cut/merge MPG files WITHOUT re-encoding, you can NOT use neither VirtualDub or Avisynt?