What are the options for VBR MPEG2 Cut?

[Proch]

What software does this?

I have TMPGEnc, but it doesn't cut VBR with any reasonable accuracy.

Does MPEG2VCR do it? There doesn't seem to be any working demo download on the Womble site.

What other software is good for this?

[SLK001]

The problem with TMPGEnc, is that the video frames do not line up properly with the video times. TMPGEnc cuts on the video times. VirtualDub, however, keeps pretty good sync with the frames and the times.

Here's what I do to make my cuts (on sometimes very large (>4GB) files):

1) I create a frameserving .AVS script of the clip I want to cut.
2) Load that .AVS into VirtualDub.
3) Use VD to find the correct times that I want to cut on (write them down precisely).
4) Load my original .M2V or .MPG file into TMPGEnc > FILES > MPEG TOOLS > CUT/MERGE.
5) Input my times from step 3.
6) Make the cut.

This is sometimes a scary operation, since the video is so out of whack in TMPGEnc. To calm yourself, just close your eyes. You will usually find that the resulting cut was perfect.

[Proch]

Wow, that's a great idea. I didn't think of using the original AVI. It should work because the timescales should be identical.

My other option was to cut AVI, but I really don't want to. I'm transferring old Hi8 to DVD and my AVIs are on the order of 30GB, so I'd rather work with a post-compression 5GB MPEG.

One question: How did you get VirtualDub to read your .AVI? It gives me an error about 'dvsd'. I've read articles that say to install DVSoft codec, but will this replace DirectShow as my AVI Codec? I'm concerned that quality will go down or CPU usage will increase if I install a different codec.

[SLK001]

No, you don't want to use the original .AVI file. Encode the .AVI as you normally would, then use my frameserving technique to get the times. If you want to cut the .M2V file, then use this file to get the times.

But, you can try your method by frameserving your .AVI to VD. Just add this line in your frameserving script:
AVISOURCE(C:\YOUR DIR\YOUR.AVI)
I don't see any reason why it should not work.

[Proch]

Ok, I'm going to try as you described.

At the same time, I'm wondering why the following wouldn't work:
1) Load the AVI into an editor/player like VirtualDub
2) Find your cut points to the nearest frame
3) Use them in TMPGEnc

Maybe I'm trivializing because I don't know how VirtualDub works yet.