HELP - Need software for mac that can trim/cut clips without quality loss

[someone04]

i have multiple clips that i want to put together but edit certain parts of each one then make one big file.

imovie works great as far editing the clips and making one big movie, the problems start when i try to export it....no matter what i do i lose alot of quality, the videos come out faded.

what i wish i could do is not encode at all and just patch portions i edited together.

I need some kind of software that will let me edit my clips and put them together in some sort track/time line without me encoding or encode without losing quality

I cant for the life of me find software that does that, i wish there was a setting in imovie to encode it not to lose quality even if the file size was big.

Can anyone please help me out, ive already spent a few hours and cant find anything

[Baldrick]

Final Cut Express. But I guess you are looking for something free or cheaper... Most free basic cutters/joiners like avidemux, mpeg streamclip does not have any multiple track timeline.

[rumplestiltskin]

What is the format of the clip(s)?

[goga]

A free and open source app is Avidemux. (and on Wikipedia). It isn't very "Apple" looking (the dock icon ain't particularly slick!) but it does allow you to edit a file and save it with out re-encoding it again.

You'll have to set the video to "copy" and audio to "copy" (so as not to re-encode). Also your edits will have to be made on I frames.

I use it the whole time. Very useful.

[goga]

I was looking at List of video editing software on Wikipedia and it listed Blender (free and open source). So I looked into it further and I think it may have the functionality you need regarding multiple-track time-line editing. Blender is mainly a 3d animation app but it also has a video editor built in. I have only just downloaded it myself and haven't really got a clue how to find my way around in it but it looks quite complicated. I did manage to load up some video into it, but that's as far as I've got

I found a blog post on video editing in Blender from 2008. And another one and another

The video editing component of Blender seems to be called Video Sequence Editor. Try googling that it may help.

[rumplestiltskin]

a month later... What is the format of the clips?

[someone04]

sorry guys, ive been away from my computer for a while, wanted to say thanks to everyone that replied.

the files were mp4's , im not sure about the codec and all that.

i ended up using the mpegstream clip to edit the files then used it to join them, so there was no fancy editing, or transitions.

very disapointed that at the current video editing software, imove was the only thing that seemed half way decent and even that you have to re-encode everything