July 04, 2006

Curious George - basic video editing? I have very limited needs, but also very limited personal resources. Put another way, I'm a klutz. Little help?

So, recently I've been looking at the mass of digitised video on my PC. The size and dead weightiness of the files are getting me down, in terms of storage and of usability, and it occurs to me that there is a lot of fat that could be trimmed off, and also that it might be easier to cut others into tiny pieces for easier storage and management. You know, like pets. So, what very simple, eejit-friendly method should I use to trim or separate video files (MPG and DIVX) on my PC? There are some files I need to shorten, and can discard the surplus of, and others I would like to separate into a number of different files for ease of storage and transmission (it's my... video art). I have Cyberlink Power Director Express on my Computer, but it's aimed at DV cameras, I think - you have to import video and then export it again. I just want something for dividing exists video files, small, simple and if at all possible inexpensive. I can do it on a Mac, if necessary, but it will be more hassle... Also, a much more minor thing, but is there something that lets you reorient phone/camera videos? I tend to hold my phome as a camera by instinct, long side running left to right, and so my video is always at a right angle. I realise that simply removing all technology from my hands might be an easier and more elegant solution.

posted by Monkey Haus 18 years ago
  • > you have to import video and then export it again in my experience, most video utilities operate on copies of the original file for fallback reasons. i used something called "mpeg splitter" several years ago. this might be the current version ($20) but i don't remember who made the one i used. it worked okay. there seems to be a bunch of similar utilities available (here, here, and here). it'd also be worth checking on sourceforge.
  • I hate to say it, but Windows Movie Maker is adequate enough to do these simple tasks. I wouldn't want to try to do anything elaborate with it, but if all you want to do is break up some video into smaller clips, I'm sure you can accomplish your task with it.
  • Monkey haus. Here's the problem. To you, all video is the same. It plays back. You think it's easily editable. But it's not. There are two types of codecs, 'editing' codecs and 'distribution' codecs. Editing codecs, like DV, are easy to edit with, because every frame contains all the information. So you can cut pretty much anywhere. Distribution codecs, like MPEG 1,2,4, DivX and WMV files do not contain all the information. They have a frame that contains all the information (an I frame) and then for a pattern (up to 15 or so) of frames that are merely the changes. Editing on a non-I frame is particularly difficult: You have to reconstruct the frame from the other information, and additionally, re-conform the pattern of frames. I think Avid/Pinnicale's Liquid can do this. But realistically? Almost all Editing software (in the prosumer space) is aimed at DV. Which is why you have to import it (Creating DV files), edit it (in DV format) and output (recreating any sort of compression. Or you could just buy another hard drive.
  • if you can do it on a mac, then imovie seems the obvious choice. Videohelp.com has a very thorough list of how to edit video and links to lots of programs.
  • Super is a free utility that allows you to do pretty well all video conversions. It handles 3gp/3g2 (Nokia, Siemens, Sony, Ericsson), asf, avi (DivX, H263, H263+, H264, Xvid, MPEG4, MSmpeg4 etc), dat, fli, flc, flv (used in Flash), mkv, mpg (Mpeg I, Mpeg II), mov (H263, H263+, H264, MPEG4 etc), mp4 (H263, H263+, H264, MPEG4), ogg, qt, rm, ram, rmvb, str (Play Station), swf (Flash), ts (HDTV), viv, vob, and wmv. It also handles audio file format conversion including ac3, amr, mp2, mp3, mp4, ogg, ra, wav, and wma. A Video editor I am aware of (Free of course!) Virtualdub
  • iMovie! Gosh, I'd forgotten I owned that. At a pinch, I can load them onto a FAT32 external HDD and do it there. Thanks very much for the suggestions, people, which I shall work through over the weekend - and you're right, filmgeek, I had no idea about the different forms of codec. I was thinking of mpegs as being basically text documents with motion and sounds - clip a bit off here or there and the rest remains the same. Clearly it's more complex than that...
  • I'm going to second Virtualdub - if you are working with .avi files of most any flavor, you can do *extremely* quick and efficient cutting on the files. in a nutshell: - open file. - mark your "in" and "out" points and delete what you don't want. - on the toolbar, under "video" and "audio", select "Direct Stream Copy". - under "file", select "Save As Avi" and give it a new name. cutting a 80-minute divx file (700mb) down to 30 minutes (325mb) took approximately 30 seconds - no reencoding necessary.