Edit avi without altering quality

[eon_designs]

Hello

This has probably been covered in other threads - apologies as I could not really find anything that sort of fitted the bill.

I have an XviD AVI file with an AC-3 audio track.

I want to cut a part out of the file and also adjust the contrast and possibly the colour.

How can I do all this and not alter the quality of the file - in other words I don't want to have to re-encode it to another format and lose some of the quality - or lose the AC-3 Audio track.

Please be kind with your suggestions.

Many thanks. eon.

[hech54]

You can re-encode it to the same format but you will still need to re-encode it once you alter it.

[eon_designs]

And that re-encoding will reduce the quality?

[hech54]

A simple cut on a "key frame" in the right program will not require a re-encode. Once you add a filter you will
need to re-encode....and the general consensus is that any re-encode reduces quality.

[redwudz]

You can reduce the quality loss of re-encoding somewhat by increasing the bitrate. (And the filesize.) You can probably do your filtering and cutting in VirtualDub or AVIDemux. If you use a 'Target quantizer' setting of '2', with the Xvid codec, you should have about the same quality as the original. Or if you want a particular filesize, use a two pass encode.