Recommendation for simple editing program?

[latichever]

Can anyone recommend a simple, fast, and (I hope) free or inexpensive program that will allow me to take a small scene from a large video and save it as a separate video file? I'm using mostly mpegs, with the occasional avi, asf, and wmv.

I have Easy Media Creator but that's too cumbersome for this simple task, and I have nanocosmos mpeg editor, which works great, but it only works on the computer where I have my pvr. It won't work on my laptop, if it doesn't detect the presence of the pvr.

Thanks.

[Baldrick]

windows movie maker? but it will reencode all video.

if you just want to cut without reconversion,
videoredo or mpg2cut2 for mpeg2,
virtualdub for avi,
asfbin for wmv,asf.

[edDV]

There is no universal tool. You match the editor to the project goal.

[mikiem]

VirtualDub/Mod/Mpg2

Project X

Free winmedia utilities at Microsoft.com for wmv & asf

If you can find them, several gui's for older utilities for asf.

[BiggerJim]

For AVI, ASF or WMV:

Some programms will achieve frame accurate cuts without reencoding the complete movie. They will reencode only the portion between the cut and the next keyframe. This is possible with:

Asfbin V 1.5 or later (for *.wmv) --> use -rkf option
VirtualDub V 1.7 or later --> use "Smart Rendering" (you have to have the appropriate codec to reencode the missing part)
Avidemux, I think starting with Version 2.3 or so --> use "Smart Copy"

If you are looking for a GUI for asfbin (it's only commandline), try cut assistant. This can be used with virtualdub and avidemux too, for that matter.

NOTE: if you tryAsfbin with -rkf and asfbin gives you this error: "Decompression error: VCM decoding driver is not available", the you must install the VCM driver from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/de/9series/codecs/vcm.aspx