I’m just looking to cut & extract parts of video. Pretty simple. Was using Real player’s Trimmer for a bit and it worked out quite well, but for some reason it refuses to function anymore.
Any suggestions for other freeware programs that are simple to use?
You could try avidemux.
All the free stuff kinda sucked for me but I heard good things about Virtuadub.
Hey thanks. That worked.
Now---- know of any good programs that can simply merge multiple video files together in one? No encoding, just putting them together. Virtuadub won’t do it, nor will Any Video Converter.
Anyone please?
It kinda has to encode them to “put them together” from my understanding.
avidemux can join with stream copy [media=youtube]wsLqJM6B5J0[/media]
What type of video are you working with?
If you enable direct stream copy in virtualdub and appended all the file in order, you can cut and join them without reencoding. But if the video is compressed, they are limited to be buy in at certain frames (key frames).
Actually once i got more familiar with virtualdub, i found it could do everything i wanted and more…
Although i wonder, does Direct stream copy result in a loss of quality?
No. Direct stream copy is an exact copy of the input stream.
Assuming you have a PC with Windows, you might as well download and install Windows Movie Maker.
Why? It’s going to give you more options than a lot of the “simple video editors.”
Most video editors – whether they’re Apple of Windows format OR both --, function similarly and once you learn one program, the skills transfer to another. It’s a huge myth that Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere are vastly different. Yes, FCP has more options but the basics are the same as Adobe Premiere. I’ve used both and once I figured out how to import footage into Final Cut Pro it wasn’t much different from Premiere.
While you’re at it, look for a video converter, too. Most of the video online is in FLV (Flash video) format for websites… This despite declarations from Apple that Flash was “dead.” (Well, developers ARE moving to a different HTML format that’s supposedly easier to use than Flash but in the meantime websites are still using Flash. Go figure!) Older examples and alternate sites generally have videos in WMV or AVI format. Depending on the video editor, you will have to convert online video to a format that’s easier for a video editor to work with. The same video converter can also be used to convert most camcorder footage/capture footage into a more workable format. Not every editor out there works well with MP4 or MPEG-2 footage… The newest editors WILL cut to the closest frame but older editors often don’t.
MPEG Streamclip is a freeware video footage converter and is fairly good and simple to use. Should be compatible through at least Windows Vista if they haven’t patched it yet for Windows 7.
Also get the old WMM, it does stuff better.
WMM is really easy to use. Avidemux or Wax are similar, and more powerful, but not quite as hold-your-handy. vReveal is a good tool to have in the box, too.
Ok now why the heck does full processing mode result in insane file sizes? I had a 32 minute clip that was only about 228MBs. I use full processing mode(had to, program was being stupid and not saving my edits with direct stream copy this time) and…
…24GBs!!! o_O
http://smartassradio.com/wp-content/gallery/site-images/docbrown.jpg
oh wow I thought everybody just snaked Vega pro from torrent sites, its nice to know there’s decent legit free software
Just download handbrake now and convert that file to MP4.
Use 2-pass encoding with an 1800kbs average bitrate. All filters off except for decomb set to default.
If you want no encoding, just merge, and don’t mind working in a command prompt, you can use mencoder for that.
Just set the RF to 20. It’ll look exactly the same.
What’s decomb do?
It basically smooths out the look of the video. Works much better than either deinterlace and deblock.
Why MP4? I like my files to be .avi as thats a very common format.
And I just put that gigantic file through “Any Video Converter” afterwards, with an xvid bitrate of 1024 and leaving framesize/FPS as original. Shrunk it down to 234MBs.
Not familiar with handbreak. Could it have reduced the filesize while keeping lossless quality?
That’s fine. I just assumed that you were doing so for web video. My bad.
MP4 in of itself actually reduces filesize while keeping lossless quality depending on the codec you use. And Handbrake is very good at it.