Editing Out Commercials. Pre or Post Re-encoding?

[kelemvor]

I'm using SageTV to record TV show sin MPEG2. I am then convierting them to XVid or Divx using AutoGK.

I want to go through and edit out commercials and I have two questions.

1) Does it make much of a difference (other than the software needed) to do the editing out before to encode them to XVid or if I do it afterwards?

2) Based on when I do the cutting, are there good FREE programs that I can use to edit the files? Which would you recommend?

Thanks.

[jdizzy40]

Cut before you convert. I use MPEG Editor (not free) from TMPGENc. Look under the tools section for freeware editors.

[boldego]

You might also try VideoRedo.

[mats.hogberg]

...or womble mpeg vcr.

/Mats