Easiest Cutting Program?

[Merkaba188]

I recorded my cousin's wedding on a Flip Mino HD, and I have 7 separate .mp4 files that I want to edit. Once the editing is done, I'm just going to burn to DVD with ConvertX or AVStoDVD.

The 7 files are 1280x720p with H264 and MPEG-4 AAC inside the .mp4 container. All I want to do editing-wise is cut out a few parts here and there, nothing special.

The main problem is saving the new .mp4 with all of the cuts. I tried Sony Vegas Pro 9.0 first. Once cut and saved, the quality was MUCH lower than the original files. I tweaked around for a long time in the "Render As" part of the program changing the rendering templates. I tried pretty much every relevant template, and I even tried making a custom template as close to the original file properties as possible. They all still looked pretty bad. They either just looked much worse on the whole, or the video streaked whenever the camera was moved.

The next program I used was AVIDemux, which actually worked really well. There were no complicated "Save As" templates to mess with, it just let me save the audio/video in the original format by choosing "Copy" in the dropdown menu. The problem with this program is that it keeps getting the audio and video out of sync. A couple out of the 7 were okay, some were just slightly out of sync, and a few were WAY out of sync.


So my question is this... What is the easiest program to use out there that will give you an end result close to the original file. I'm not doing anything hardcore, ALL I am doing is cutting a few seconds out here and there, so I don't understand why it should have to render and re-encode everything.

EDIT-MediaInfo on one of the files:
General
Complete name : C:\Users\Jon\Desktop\1 - Aisle Intro.MP4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Sony PSP
Codec ID : MSNV
File size : 117 MiB
Duration : 1mn 34s
Overall bit rate : 10.4 Mbps
Encoded date : UTC 2009-10-24 17:36:01
Tagged date : UTC 2009-10-24 17:36:01

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 1 frame
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 1mn 34s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 10.4 Mbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 30.000 fps
Resolution : 24 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.375
Stream size : 117 MiB (99%)
Language : Japanese
Encoded date : UTC 2009-10-24 17:36:01
Tagged date : UTC 2009-10-24 17:36:01

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format version : Version 4
Format profile : LC
Format settings, SBR : No
Format settings, PS : Yes
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 1mn 34s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 64.0 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
Stream size : 737 KiB (1%)
Language : Japanese
Encoded date : UTC 2009-10-24 17:36:01
Tagged date : UTC 2009-10-24 17:36:01

[Baldrick]

Can't you export to dvd mpeg directly in vegas? And then just author it to a dvd without any further reconverting.

[Merkaba188]

When I go to File->Render As I don't see anything that says DVD.

There is a selection for "MainConcept MPEG-2" in the "save as type" dropdown box, and it puts a .mpg file extension on the video. Should I manually change it to .m2v or something?

And one thing I did notice was when I went to File->Properties there was a whole bunch of stuff in incorrect format. This is 720p video, so it should be progressive and de-interlacing shouldn't be a problem, but Vegas is trying to do a whole bunch of weird stuff to it. I understand that I'm going to lose the 720p by authoring it to 720x480 NTSC DVD standards, but it is trying to change a few things I don't believe it should be.

Can someone point me to a tutorial or something on using Vegas Pro? I'm getting into some pretty complicated stuff here, when all I'm really trying to do is cut a little bit of video out. I had no idea it was going to be this complicated.

[The_Doman]

So my question is this... What is the easiest program to use out there that will give you an end result close to the original file. I'm not doing anything hardcore, ALL I am doing is cutting a few seconds out here and there, so I don't understand why it should have to render and re-encode everything.

Maybe Cyberlink PowerDirector 8 is worth a look?
It has intelligent/smart rendedering of only the parts which are edited and can handle most of the HD formats.

[Merkaba188]

That sounds more like an alternative to Vegas, which will get into rendering/saving properties that really aren't needed.

As I've said before, I'm just trying to cut out a little bit here and there. I'm MAYBE cutting out somewhere between 1-3 minutes out of a total of a 41 minute video.

Is there anything out there that will let me do this, and save the end result with the EXACT same file properties as the original? AVIDemux let me do this, but that started to get out of sync. I'm looking for a program more like AVIDemux, rather than another professional editing program like Vegas. Those programs are great, but not for someone like me or for the project I'm doing. I'm a complete novice with this kind of stuff, and I'm not trying to do any hardcore editing.


*EDIT*

This is REALLY starting to get me angry. I've been messing with Vegas for like a week, and it looks just awful. When I recorded the video, I wasn't the best director and I was pretty shaky at times (it was raining/windy during the ceremony outside). The original .mp4 straight from the camera looked surprisingly good as far as the shaky part. With vegas, when the camera starts to shake, it just blurs the video like crazy, and the entire project looks awful.

I tried a ton of different output templates, and the best so far has been the Windows Media Video and after all of the cuts I get one big .wmv file. The video quality seems to look better than all of the other methods (SonyAVC, MainConcept MPEG-2, etc.) but the blur is still too much for me to handle.

If Windows Movie Maker could input .mp4 I would probably be set.

[lordsmurf]

When I go to File->Render As I don't see anything that says DVD.

There is a selection for "MainConcept MPEG-2" in the "save as type" dropdown box, and it puts a .mpg file extension on the video. Should I manually change it to .m2v or something?

And one thing I did notice was when I went to File->Properties there was a whole bunch of stuff in incorrect format. This is 720p video, so it should be progressive and de-interlacing shouldn't be a problem, but Vegas is trying to do a whole bunch of weird stuff to it. I understand that I'm going to lose the 720p by authoring it to 720x480 NTSC DVD standards, but it is trying to change a few things I don't believe it should be.

Can someone point me to a tutorial or something on using Vegas Pro? I'm getting into some pretty complicated stuff here, when all I'm really trying to do is cut a little bit of video out. I had no idea it was going to be this complicated.

You export to an MPEG-2, and then author it with authoring software. (TDA, for example.)
Guide at http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/video/author-tsunami.htm

[Merkaba188]

Even after exporting to MPEG-2 and authoring, the blur/streaking is still there on the final DVD.

I guess it is just what Vegas does for some reason. It doesn't handle fast movement very well.

[lordsmurf]

It sounds like it's been blended deinterlaced.
Change the settings.

[skaleton]

Have you tried mkvtoolnix to split your mkv files?

[Ventolin]

Hi Merkaba188,

There is an old skool brute-force approach to this which is what I would do when all else fails.

1. Convert the video to a lossless format like huffyuv avi or use avisynth - pay attention to deinterlacing and frame rates

2. Convert the audio to wav @ 44.1Khz

3. Load the video and the audio into a program which can show you the exact video length and audio length (vegas will do)

4. Convert the audio to wav @ 48KHz and stretch / shrink to match the exact length of the video (vegas will do)

5. Save the audio from step 4 and use the converted audio to make (mux) an avi with the lossless video and converted audio

6. Edit the video/audio (vdub or avisynth using vdub for testing)

7. Encode the video/audio to mpeg2 video DVD format and ac3 2.0 48KHz

8. Author content to DVD

This method will require *alot* of disk space for the video as it will be lossless. However, you can save the disk space if you learn how to use avisynth. By using Avisynth you can deinterlace, edit, mux and resize all in 1 script though you'll have to process the audio using vegas or similar before you can mux back in in avisynth.

A common technique for editing is to use a proxy file - you could covnert your source video to something like xvid with lots of reference frames and then edit that instead of using lossless huffyuv. You would then use the edit points from the proxy video for editing your original source in something like avisynth.

Avisynth really is a very powerful program even though it's a scripting language. It's been around for years and years and very much worth the effort to learn how to use it. Start by installing it, and then making a text file with .avs extension and have DirectshowSource("myfile.mp4") as your first line. Load that into vdub and you should see your video.

The other option would be to remux from .mp4 to h.264 TS and edit using a lossless h.264 TS editor like TSPE. You'll still have to convert the audio outside TSPE and your remux program though.

Finally you could just convert non-losslessly to I frame only xvid / mpeg2 / other codec and use a very high bitrate which will allow you to edit in a larger number of programs but have a generation loss in quality.

There are of course many other ways to do this, probably refinements to the above process, or better programs out that I don't know about, but hope this will get you on your way. The key thing is to maintain sync and that is where step 4 above is the most important.

Good luck,

Vent