[b]Help wth VirtualDub - rejoining trimmed segments[/b]

[pberke]

Hi gang had a basic question about VirtualDub 1.53

I currently use it to trim out commercials, which is does beautifully when the files are large .AVI. Myquestion is what is the best process for re-joining the file into one part and what is the best compression to use for eventually making VCDs and DVDs. Does anyone know the command string for rejoining and compressing using VirtualDub 1.53. Mpeg4?

Thanks

[teegee420]

Just use "append to avi" to join. The files must have the exact same properties. If you plan to convert to DVD or VCD use a lossless codec like Huffyuv or Picvideo MJPEG, then convert to mpeg with TMPGEnc.

Better yet, if you're just cutting out commercials and such, use "direct stream copy" for the video mode. Why would you want to recompress if you're going to convert to mpeg?

[pberke]

Thanks Teegee420 for the advice.

I have a 160 GB Hard disk. I have been capturing movies from vhs and some dvds using a variety of capture programs/utilities. They all have captured as large .avi files. After trimming, it was my objective and understanding that I could compress them down to make it move efficient for my hard drive. In most cases it worked with a compression of Mpeg4 V2 from the compressions option and then file-> save as .avi which gave me a compressed file. This did work well with Easy CD 6 and now with Nero 6 Ultra.

Occasionally though it would screw up a VCD or DVD by not synchronizing audio and video (mostly video lagging behind audio)

This is when I decided to ask for help in case I was missing something that would be more reliable.

Thanks again (By the way I liked Gogo from Kill Bill 1 too)

[ZippyP.]

If you're just cutting out segments with Virtualdub, then converting to mpeg, then your best bet is to frameserve from Virtualdub directly to a good encoding program like TMPGEnc. Here's a frameserving guide. Unnecessary conversion/compression reduces quality.

Use Nero for burning, it's mpeg encoder is crap.