How to edit/filter MPEG2 and save to MPEG2?

[wallmg]

This seems like it would be a common procedure, but I can't find it anywhere.

I've got home movies captured as MPEG2 that I just want to run through a color fix filter before encoding and burning to DVD. I can open it in VDubMod and add the filter, but can only save as AVI, which I'm assuming would be a much bigger file.

Also, I've captured a program from television in MPEG2 format and would just like to cut commercials (which I did in Womble) and filter out the station logo stuff. But again, I run into the same problem with VDubMod saving to AVI.

Do I have to do something with the frameserver to make this work (which I've just glanced over how to do in the help files) or is there some other (preferrably freebie) program that will allow filtering of MPEG2 without coverting them? Thanks.

[qlizard]

There are a number of programs which can be used to apply a filter to MPEG (ulead vs7 or msp, pinnacle studio, vegas 4). But to my knowledge, all of them will rerender (with quality loss) at least the section to which the filter has been applied.

[bugster]

Mpeg format was never intended to be edited. A few tools do exist for editing mpeg. Womble mpeg VCR seems to be popular (though I havn't used it myself) and should be fine for simple cuts and splices.

Adding filters will require re-encoding which will result in some quality loss. As you appear to have realised, you can use virtualdub mod and then frameserve to Tmpgenc or some other mpeg encoder.

If using TmpGenc, you could cut out the vdub step for the colour correction and use tmpGenc in build colour correction filter.

[sacajaweeda]

That's the problem with capturing to mpeg. Your source is already highly compressed when it's encoded on the fly durring the capture process. Altering it means re-encoding it, and that means more quality loss. MPEG compression removes data.