MovieFactory 2.0 MPEG re-encoding

[johnmeyer]

Well, I just got off the line with tech support and they confirmed the bad news. MovieFactory does indeed re-encode the MPEG files any time that you use the split or trim functions. This means that if you capture video in MPEG format and then want to trim the beginnings or ends of your video clips, you'd better do it before importing into MF. Otherwise, you will pay the penalty of waiting hours to re-encode, with the resulting loss of quality of a second-generation MPEG file.

I have confirmed this behavior by doing some simple tests, and the tech support confirmed that this is how the product works. This makes the program almost unusable for my application which was to take captured TV shows, trim out the commercials, and then save to DVD. This should be a core application of a low-end authoring program like MovieFactory.

I've tried trimming in TMPEGEnc, but on a long (4 hour) MPEG file, it completely screws up the edit points (after you press "RUN," the resulting MPEG file doesn't begin and end even close to the points in the original video that were set by the trim markers). Probably something to do with big NTFS files, but that's a post for another time.

BTW, just to be clear, the problem in MovieFactory that is the subject of this post happens even with short three-minute test MPEG files. If I add this short file to MF and then proceed immediately to the last step and make the DVD, MF doesn't re-render. However, if I simply split or trim the three-minute video and then proceed to the last step, MF immediately starts re-rendering.

Is anyone else having this problem with MovieFactory? Do you consider a BIG deal, or just a minor annoyance?

[aubrey_q]

Minor annoyance. It seems now most authoring programs re-encode anyway.

On a different subject, someone told me DVD Workshop doesn't. I don't know if it's my version but I put a TMPGEnc-encoded file into a DVD Workshop project and the first thing it did was "convert video title". It took all night.