Newbie Dumb Question

[malcolmpark]

Help!!

I paid for VSDC 7.1.12.430 and am running it on my Win10 PC. I am new to this, and only need to edit my father's old 8mm films which were copied to .mp4 using a Wolverine Moviemaker Pro 8mm to .mp4 converter. The .mp4 files are fine.

All I want to do is cut out some portions of the .mp4

I find VSDC impossibly complicated to use!!

can someone PLEASE help me understand how to cut out a piece of the .mp4? The help video on VSDC's website doesnt explain at all well how to do this - there are buttons that I dont seem to have and the whole thing assumes a level of familiarity and expertise that I simply don't have.

Please don't suggest that I have the 8mm fils professionally copied - it costs hunders of dollars/pounds, and i have almost 100 reels of 8mm

Thank you.

[DB83]

Money probably wasted on VSDC. You really should have asked before the purchase.

You should be able to use the free avidemux the mark A/B sections of the parts you want to cut and use 'Copy' and .mp4 output so your final .mp4 has the same quality as the original.

[malcolmpark]

Thanks DB83. I bought VDSC because it has a video stabilisation feature and i paid £15. Other software that has this seem to cost a hundred pounds more or less. Anyone out there can help me with VDSC?

[DB83]

Well if you want to stanilise as well then re-encoding takes place regardless of what program you use.

Now I do have an older 'free' version of VSDC and cutting/triming is quite straight forward.


1. Having imported your video you should see a series of 3 'film' icons just above the timeline.
2. Drag the cursor on the timeline to the start of the section you want to cut out and press the middle of the 3 icons (hold the mouse over the icon to reveal 'set begin work area...')
3. Drag the cursor on the timeline to the end of the section you want to cut out and press the right of the 3 icons (hold the mouse over the icon to reveal 'set end work area...')
4. You should now have a grey marked area on the timeline which will be removed by the following step.
5. Near the top of the screen you should see a series of icons under heading 'Cutting and Splitting'. A single click of the scissors icon will remove the selected section from your video.


As for the program, you paid £15 for it !!!!. So do not expect miracles from it.

[malcolmpark]

Thank you so much DB83. I did what you said and it worked. The next question is how do i save the new edited fil. Does "Export" mean "Save" or is there a different button to push if i want to save it? And how do i make sure that it is saved with no loss of qulaity, but also not taking uo too much disk space? Teh original quality is poor. Final question: when i scanned the 8mm film using the Wolverine Moviemaker Pro, I purposely zoomed out on the MovieMaker Pro and have purposely scanned with the frame borders visible along all four edges. I did this becase i know that the VSDC stabilisation process can reuslt in a cropped image. So now I have to crop the video on its four edges. I have managed to do this manually, but it doesnt give an ideal result. VSDC has an "Auto Crop" feature. Does this feature automitically crop the moving image intelligently, i.e. allowing for th efact that soemtimes there is more border at the top, soemtimes more border on the right, etc.?

[DB83]

Yes. The general video terminology of 'Export' = 'Save'. As to without loss of quality I can not truly help. From what I see, the program, just like many others, works by a series of templates which then apply bitrate etc. And as I already stated, do anything over and above a simple cut you will have to re-encode regardless so even if the program can export exactly the same as the source that is not going to have the desired purpose.

And simple video editors - and VSDC does fall in to this category - work by removing all technical decisions away from the user. If there is a user manual then I do respectfully suggest you read it. No one gets things right first time and everyone learns by their mistakes.

[malcolmpark]

Thank you very much sir. You have been really helpful. As to a user manual: there isn't one, just an FAQ on their website.