which software do you recommend for editing?

[Luis]

Dear all,

I have been converting my home videos (Hi8 source) to mpeg-2 svcd´s, using VirtualDub for capture and TmpgEnc for encoding. Final quality is very good. Now I would like to edit some of the videos to produce shorter versions and add subtitles and effects. I have tryed several editing programs (ulead studio 6, Pinnacle studio 7, Intervideo Winproducer 2), and in all cases svcd output is bad, with noise in fast moving and dark scenes. TmpgEnc is not good for editing. So, which alternatives do you recommend? Something that allows to edit and keep quality, please!

Tx.

[Truman]

Edit the avi with Avisynth / VirtualDub or Premiere. When everything is done, convert to MPEG.

[Luis]

My idea is to work directly with the mpeg-2 files already produced with TmpgEnc. Is there a software adequated for this?

[Truman]

That is IMHO a bad idea. It is much easier to edit an avi than a MPEG.
You capture to avi anyway, what is the problem?

[Luis]

Disk space...
1 hour of film takes 13 Gb as avi and only 1,3 Gb as mpeg-2. To have instant acess to scenes from several films its much easier to work with mpeg´s, but this is a guess since I have no experience.

[Truman]

You do not need to save another temporary avi file. Which editing tool you ever use (Premiere or Avisynth or / and VirtualDub), frameserve to TMPGEnc.
If you convert to MPEG first and then add effects, then you have to reencode. Of course you loose quality if you encode two times.
You may cut and merge a MPEG with TMPG or better with M2 Edit. You may add subtitles with I-Author or submux. If you want more, you have to reencode, that's a bad solution.

[Luis]

Ok, I was thinking that encoding twice would not change the quality of the output! That´s why we should listen to other people with experience first...

So the procedure is to encode only at the end of the process. Do you think that some of the prgrams that I have mentioned (Ulead videostudio 6, Pinnacle studio 7 or Intervideo Winproducer) are adequate to edit and output to avi for later encoding with TmpegEnc? Or your advise if definetively to use freeware tools? I am not speaking of Adobe Premiere, because as far as I know is very expensive (so expensive as good, probably...).

Thanks for your help.

[Truman]

I did not use any of the tools you mentioned, so I dont know whether there is a way to frameserve. Well, the advantage of VD and Avisynth is, that it is freeware. Both are really powerfull tools, so there is no need to spend much money.

[dumwaldo]

just a quick note i thought should be added. if you dont see the ability to do what you want in VirtualDub you can easily add filters to allow VDub to perform additional tasks.

visit http://www.virtualdub.org/virtualdub_filters to check out some extra filters for VirtualDub. when i just went there to check the link i noticed Donald Graft's site was not available. if you have the same problem please bookmark the page and try again later. Donald Graft offers some very powerful and helpful filters to improve VDub's abilities. if it can not be done with the default install i am pretty sure you can get a filter top add any of the effects you mention.

peace out,
dumwaldo

[Luis]

Thanks, some of these filters definitively improve Virtualdub capabilities. In spite of that, what atracts me in the commercial software I have mentioned is, for exemple, automatic scene detection and generation of the correponding clips (with later drag and drop); this makes editing much more easy than manual cut and merge! we need such a "filter" for virtualdub or tmpegenc. :P

[dumwaldo]

see the main problem with scene detection and cutting apps is that it seems like none of them cut on the correct frames and the only way to insure cutting is performed on the correct frames is to do it yourself. it also seems that VirtualDub is the only software that even pays enough attention to these frames to let you know what are the right frames are.

the single most important feature of VDub is the frame identification that is displayed next to the time. it is displayed as a letter inside [ ] brackets. hold your mouse over that and it should pop up a key for you. when working with AVI files you must cut on a keyframe, denoted by a [K] next to the time. when working with MPG files you must cut on an interleaved frame, denoted by a [I] next to the time. if you cut on other frames you risk loosing audio/video sync. it may not happen every time you cut but it WILL happen eventually if you continue to do it. *tip: hold down the shift key and VirtualDub will only let you select the correct frames.

even when i am cutting with TMPGEnc i will open the file with VirtualDub first and map out where i am going to cut by matching the correct frame to the exact time. then i use the time values i established with VirtualDub and enter them into the mpeg tool in TMPGEnc to do the cutting. by doing this i have managed to completely eliminate the sync issues that so many others have when cutting with TMPGEnc, or any other application for that matter. i have also managed to avoid the 'non specific' cutting location problem that TMPGEnc sometimes exhibits.

this is an important detail for video editing and should not be overlooked even though it seems that most video editing programs dont address this. i have tried other programs but i always come back to VirtualDub and TMPGEnc. when used properly they are more powerfull than any video editing package out there but there is a much steeper learning curve and preparatory work might take a little longer before you get the actual encoding process going.

peace out,
dumwaldo

[Lamont Cranston]

In order to edit mpeg files without rerendering you have to cut on an I frame which occurs every 18 frames depending on how the frame sequence is setup. If you can live with that there are a couple of editors, operating on memory, that can be found at the left under the Tools tab called MEdit2 Pro and Wobble which will eidt Mpeg2 without rerendering but thay are not cheap.

Audio can also be a problem if it is not quiet at the splice/cut.

I always capture and edit in avi. With my capture card every frame is a key frame so it is a no-brainer.