CUTTING quicktime files WITHOUT transcoding or paying through my nose

[nerys]

OK I got some new keychain cams (720p) that I stuff in rockets and send them up.

problem is a lot of these new cams using the worst format on earth. quicktime. not because the format sucks (seems to play fine to me) but because I can find no easy FREE way to EDIT these stinking videos.

the situation is simple. I want to "cut" a chunk off the beginning and end of the clip.

I fly them in rockets so there is "dead" time from when I "activate" the camera till when the rocket lifts off. I want to remove that. there is also a delay (sometimes a rather large one) from when I can "GET" the rocket after its landed. I need to remove that too.

I need something like Vdub that will let me set a start and end point and "trim" off the excess and resave the file without transcoding it

Any FREE suggestions on how to do this? or very cheap non apple solutions? but free would be better.

also need it for my high speed casio. same deal mov files that nothing will TOUCH for lossless editing.

[aedipuss]

try installing ffdshow and using avidemux to trim. mov would be the container, it's probably x264 inside.

[nerys]

nice thanks! and this will do it without "re-saving" ie re-compressing the video?

I think I tried avidemux once before had trouble but I do not think I ever tried FFDSHOW which would explain it

yes I believe at least one of them is x264 inside.

[Cornucopia]

You could get QTPro for $30 US. Not QUITE "through the nose".

Or

QT alternative (and a few other standalone DL's) have a QT -> Directshow bridge plugin that allows QT files to be access in most standard Directshow apps.

Also, latest releases of Vdub allow for Plugins (one of them being a QT plugin).

Plenty of options...

Scott

[nerys]

I tried AVI Demux it appears to work perfectly but the resultant video will not play. I forced it open in kmplayer and I get black with audio either way a "bad file"

I am going to try latest vdub and qt plugin now and see what happens.

No joy on qt plugin and latest vdub. it accepts it but its just a "green screen" can not edit what I can't see.

I tried using vdub blind (just pick a segment start and stop figuring maybe I could do it via timestamp for now) but it refuses to let me save the output saying compression use is not compatible with avi but it gives me no other options. even when I select all files and end it with mov same error.

I am uploading one of the files now hoping that might help. sadly since I can not CUT them they are all HUGE so its going to take a bit

here is a raw video

http://www.naramlive.com/stuff/PTDC0008.MOV

its 165mb iirc

[usually_quiet]

MPEG Streamclip worked. The resulting clip played using VLC.

[nerys]

freaking perfect !! its a bit annoying without drag and drop but it works so perfectly easily and quickly otherwise I don't care

thank you very much !!!

[Cornucopia]

I tried AVI Demux it appears to work perfectly but the resultant video will not play. I forced it open in kmplayer and I get black with audio either way a "bad file"

I am going to try latest vdub and qt plugin now and see what happens.

No joy on qt plugin and latest vdub. it accepts it but its just a "green screen" can not edit what I can't see.

I tried using vdub blind (just pick a segment start and stop figuring maybe I could do it via timestamp for now) but it refuses to let me save the output saying compression use is not compatible with avi but it gives me no other options. even when I select all files and end it with mov same error.

I am uploading one of the files now hoping that might help. sadly since I can not CUT them they are all HUGE so its going to take a bit

here is a raw video

http://www.naramlive.com/stuff/PTDC0008.MOV

its 165mb iirc

You must have something wrong on your system.

I just DL'd the file (you were right, that was way too huge, BTW), and it showed up fine in QT, MediaInfo, AND Virtualdub (with QTplugin).
It's an h.264 720p30 video w/ 32kHz LPCM audio. Hot air balloon stuff?

Often around here, not being able to play occurs more on machines where you have TOO MUCH, conflicting stuff rather than not having the correct codec. Although, in this case, if you did want to go the vdub route, you would have needed: 1) a recent copy of vdub, 2) a recent copy of the vdub QT plugin, and 3) the QT codecs (which you normally would get with a copy of QT, or with a copy of QT alternative).

Glad you got MPEGStreamclip to work, so you probably now don't need this info, but that doesn't mean the advice was wrong - and someone down the road may want to try it this way.

Scott

[nerys]

they play fine. they won't EDIT. media stream clip worked perfectly no problem at all.

I figure I must have a conflicting codec installed or a missing codec or something that buggers up vdubs ability to see it properly.

Hmm I got the latest vdub and qtplugin.

I wonder if I did not install the plug in correctly because vdub would ONLY allow me to save as AVI and then claims you can not save h264 into avi.

all I did was "copy" the plugin file into the plug in folder. was this correct?

[Cornucopia]

The QT plugin should have gone in the "plugins32" (or "plugins64", depending) folder, NOT the plugins folder. That is for Filters, etc. It was all there in the supplied Readme.

Being able to see it is pt.1.

If it can see it, it should be able to edit it. However, h.264 is primarily a LONG GOP Interframe-compressing codec. So you'll HAVE to reencode if you aren't cutting on the I-frames. And there are better apps than Vdub for editing long GOP h.264 (and any other long GOP codec for that matter).

AFA Encoding in Vdub, it ONLY exports AVI. There are currently NO other export formats (and no plans to add any that I know of). You can only use the AVI/VFW codecs that are installed on your system. To export h.264 in AVI (NOT RECOMMENDED because of many complications), you would have to use a VFW-based h.264 codec. x264 VFW should work (although I haven't tried it).

Without all that set up, you WOULD have problems.

Scott

[nerys]

so no matter what I do not want to use VDUB for these files since my primary goal is trimming WITHOUT transcoding. (they are low bitrate enough as it is

media stream clip is working well so should not be a problem now that I know about it (its eating every mov file I throw at it so far)

[Cornucopia]

Yup. If you only trimmed/edited on the I-frames, you could do a "Direct Source Copy" with no loss of quality, but it would still be transferring the h.264 from the MOV format to AVI format. Probably not a good idea.

A better idea is to re-wrap the MOV into an MP4 (easy in MPEGStreamclip or QTPro). You could try other MP4-based apps then, and you could also make use of consumer devices that understand h.264 in MP4 (much more likely than in MOV, even though they're sister containers).

BTW, MPEGStreamclip does a few things that QTPro doesn't, but QTPro does a few things that MPEGStreamclip doesn't, so you may still be interested in that as well.

Scott

[nerys]

I am not fond of apple so I won't give them my money (even just $30

another topic another day

the stream clip thing to rewrap into mp4 container. what do I have to do to do this? is it as simple as picking mp4 when saving? this will NOT transcode? simple rewrap?

so far everything I have plays the mov's fine but I am betting mp4 wrapping would improve compatibility a bit on some of the portable devices (that stutter a bit playing them even though they are not high enough a bitrate to strain the hardware sound sync etc..)

usually I just want to trim/cut without re-encoding.

so far the only annoying (VERY VERY annoying) missing feature in mpegstreamclip is I can NOT drag & drop a file onto the program. this is very very annoying when your doing 100 or more files in a dozen or more directories. man is that annoying

but I can live with it any chance the program is still being worked on?

[usually_quiet]

Yes MPEG Streamclip is still being developed. It is a cross-platform project, but mainly a Mac-oriented one. Updates for Windows are less frequent. Go to the website and find out how to contact the developers if adding drag-and-drop is so important.

If you haven't already done it, you could set up a file association for the .mov files that would allow you to right click on the file and then click "open with" to open the file in MPEG Streamclip, or even make it the default program for opening .mov files.

[nerys]

Ohhh good idea with the right click open with option. VERY good idea. Will have to see if it defaults the save location.

I will see about contacting the dev. I don't expect him to make the change but he can't know if no one asks and hey he just might.