How can I (fast) edit a movie with a Macintosh computer.

[Mac_User]

Hello Forum,

I have problems editing movies captured by a DVD recorder (LiteOn 5005) on my Macintosh computer.

I can edit movies with "MPEG Streamclip", then save the edited movie (cutting out the commercials) to a MPEG2 file and a Audio file and then burn the movie on DVD disc with "Toast6".

The result is fine and the movie plays good on DVD players, so that is not the problem.

But this editing/burning road takes so much time, its not a matter of minutes but more a matter of hours. Before burning the DVD it takes so much time in Toast to encode the audio file, (encoding the MPEG2 file is not neccesary). And when burning Toast takes all CPU power while a normal burn hardly takes any CPU power.

Q1) Is there a way to fasten the "cut the commercials and burn the movie agian" process ?
Q2) Are there any commercial DVD editing/burn Macintosh apps that are designed mainly to cut out commercials in existing home recorded DVD's ?

Thanks, Wim.

PS: I used menu option "Demux to unscaled M2V and AIFF" in MPEG Streamclip

[Baldrick]

moving you to our mac section.

[alph]

After your editing in MPEG Streamclip, you should export as "Demux to headed m2v..." and whatever the orignal audio format is. If needed Streamclip has an export with mp2 sound: if you use aiff toast will have to re-encode it.

The "headed" helps Toast properly recognise the video and audio and permits it to only re-multiplex instead of transcoding which makes things a lot faster.

There is a lot of info on all this in the help menu of MPEG Streamclip. After a quick test it seems Toast 6.0.9 properly recognises both the "demux to headed m2v and m1a" and "Export to mpeg with mp2 sound" from Streamclip 1.2. This is assuming your original audio is not AC3 in that case just use the "Demux to headed m2v and ac3..."

Hope this is what you were looking for
Alph

[rumplestiltskin]

If you have access to a PC, try TMPG DVD Author. It will do exactly what you want without having to re-encode anything (as long as the audio is 48KHz and the video is within the proper spec).

Haven't found anything to do it quite so easily on my Mac.

[Mac_User]

@ alph,
Thanks for your help. It pointed me to the latest version of MPEG Streamclip 1.2 and the inbuild Help of the app.
I found out that after editing a TV movie my best option is to save the movie as "Convert to headed MPEG..". With this option there is very little overhead before Toast 6 start to burn at a normal speed. Indeed there is no sound encoding if Toast is set to DigitalDolby. I guess the overhead time is needed to build the structure of the DVD with IFO & VOB files etc.
With the latest version of MPEG Streamclip, and with the option as mentioned above, editing and burning can be done in a reasonable time.

@ rumplestiltskin, thanks for your suggestion but I don't have a Windows PC. But as mentioned above I can now edit/burn TV movies without to much frustration.
I hope Mac developers will bring out a user friendly editing & burning app so all can be done in a single app and with only a few mouseclicks.

Thanks again, regards, Wim.

[alph]

Just some comments

-DVD will accept MP1, MP2, AC3, DTS, PCM sound, and I think Toast will accepts them all too. I've only tested MP1, MP2, AC3 myself. Toast itself only encodes audio to PCM, which is big, and AC3, if you have JAM

-I mentioned using the Demux to headed options becuase I've found that they tend to be better accpeted by Toast than the Convert to Headed MPEGs from Streamclip. If the latter works for you that's fine, but should it not at some other time, try the Demux headed.

-If you have both files, for example myvideo.m2v and myvideo.ac3 in the same folder, and you give toast the .m2v file, it automatically finds and associates the sound file and burns both.

Alph