lossless editing MPEG-2 (*.mpg) with trimming and appending with preview?

[Andy Gone]

Hello all,

I use a camcorder with HDD that writes directly to *.mpg files (MPEG2) - to be precise, it is DVD-compiant MPEG2/AC3. Each time I press REC, a new file starts, so when I finish shooting, I get a bunch of files that need to be put together.

My goal is to be able:
- appending clips in order to put them all together into single program file (not necessairly in the same order)
- trimming each separate clip in order to do scene cuts where I want
- previewing these cuts
- saving the resulting video losslessly (no recompression)

Could you advice any tool(s) to do that?

Useless to say that it has to be non-destructive editing, and with no sync problems, bla-bla-bla...

VirtualDub does all this, I really love this tool, but even with MPEG addon VirtualDub cannot save .mpg and cannot append MPEG streams.

Cuttermaran is also a great tool, but I need to demux everything first and also it is not so handy as VirtualDub.

I have tried Mpeg2Cut, but it does not seem to write a valid .mpg

I will really appreciate if you could share your best practices.

Thanks!

[Baldrick]

I guess you want a free tool? Then try AVIDemux.

[olyteddy]

AVI DeMux, using copy mode for both the video and audio, should be able to do that. The downside is it only cuts on 'I' frames (whole pictures, approx. every .5 seconds). But it is lossless.

edit: curse you Baldrick... beat me to the enter key...

[Andy Gone]

Thank you for fast reply.

Generally I don't care to pay a reasonable price for a tool that corresponds to my needs.

AVIDemux seems to have terrible interface (e. g. numpad used for hotkeys - not very good for notebook users). Hope I will find all needed features without a help file... probably it is a question of getting used to.

No problem to cut only on I frames - this is enough precision for home video If I need more (very improbable), I will recompress.

If you (an others) have better candidates to become my tool , please let me know.

Tx again!

[Baldrick]

VideoRedo
MPEG-VCR
Tmpgenc MPeg Editor

[TBoneit]

I Second VideoReDo for a easy interface and no re-encoding except if you were to cut in the middle of a GOP then it will encode for that GOP. Trial version after you request the Trial key works as a full version for a period of time.

If you don't request the trial key there is a limit on output file size.Before I bought they even gave me free technical support via their forum. Very friendly folks. They've also been very amenable to working to make the product better in terms of working with oddball mpeg formats. I use a s/w that captures a weird DVB to my local hard drive. Their product is the only one I know of that will take the .ts dvb data and output a nice clean mpeg2 file.

[Andy Gone]

I Second VideoReDo for a easy interface and no re-encoding except if you were to cut in the middle of a GOP then it will encode for that GOP.

This is really a nice feature.

I understand I need to check if VideoReDo is THAT nice and clean to pay 50 bucks (in comparison to AVIDemux).

Thank you a lot!

As far as many people use camcorders and havethe same tasks, I'll try to report here on my comparison.

[olyteddy]

As far as many people use camcorders and havethe same tasks, I'll try to report here on my comparison.

Or leave comments on the software over in the 'Tools' list. Or both.

[Andy Gone]

I have some remarks already (maybe some problems are because I don't know this software yet)

1) In AVIDemux there is no cut preview and no undo (you have to put in and out markers, delete unwanted part, then play, and then if you are not happy you start all over). In VideoReDo you have preview mode, which is much better.

2) In AVIDemux I can append AFTER i combined several files; in VideoReDo I can't (while using the COMBINE feature). As an alternative, I can use the JOINER feature - here I can do what I want, BUT! there is no preview of the result... AND YOU CANNOT SAVE THE JOINER PROJECT!

3) In VideoReDo I have terrible problem with timecode when I use CONBINE feature - if any of initial clips is completely cut away, the software cannot position in time correctly any more. A bug?

General impression:
VideoReDo feels better, but impossibility to append more clips in already existing "combine" project really sucks.