VCDCutter accuracy

[quriousman]

I have problems when joining clips using VCDCutter.
I cut a scene from a vcd DAT file using VCDCutter and save it to an MPG file. I cut the movie let's say for exactly 5 minutes.

When I play this clips it's duration is more than 5 minutes, let's say 5 minutes + x seconds. But when I join the clips the duration of the clip is back to 5 minutes.

My problem is the last clip is less than 5 minutes !!
It was cut few seconds from the original !!!

Anybody knows why ?
Any tools to join the clips with high precision beside VCDCutter ?

Thanks a lot.

[fingernailX]

NTSC VCD is Mpeg 1 a with a GOP of 15. That means only 1 frame in 15 is an I frame with B and P frames making up the balance of the 15 group of pictures. Precise cuts can only be made on the I frames. So you can have at least as much as a half second variation when cutting/joining. I have not used VCD Cutter. In my experience only Womble MPEGIIVcr and TMPGENC can cut and join accurately. The latest versions of TMPGENC tell you what they are doing by creating a video stream, then audio, then multiplexing and then rewriting the header. Its a multistage process but required to maintain no header errors and audio sync.

If you have a number of edits or joins do them on an all keyframe source (i.e. open the MPG in VirtualDub, make uncompressed avis, cut and join till your hearts content, frameserve out and reencode to mpg1. )

[quriousman]

I've just tried TMPGenc.
The join is accurate but the audio is not sync with the video (the video is faster than the audio). What is the problem ?
Previously I cut these clips using VCDCutter. Should I re-cut the clips ? (so many clips I've cut using VCDCutter)

I have another problem, let's say I have 1 vcd file and I want to cut some 5 minutes clips and another 10 minutes clips of this file.
The audio and video are sync, but the start and end point of the cut is not accurate (I got 5 minutes + x seconds of clip 1 and 10 minutes - x seconds of clip 2).

Anybody knows why ?

Thanks !