homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation IL-2: FB, AEP, PF @BLACKLION

Hello:
In your post you say, "all weigh in about 800MB to 1,5 GB and need to be cut to their length, as they have some promotion footage of other docs at the end, but that is easily achieved..."

How do you cut length? Do you do this to the Divx or to the DVD file after converting from Divx?
I have most of my collection on DVD's and if there is software to help me edit, i.e., shorten or even delete commercials, that would be most helpful. Many times my DVD recorder HD fills up and I burn regular t.v. shows to DVD to free space. It would be great to get rid of the commercials on the DVD. Could you point me in the right direction?
Thanks.

Hello Flanker!

well, I can offer three strategies on editing video files:

1) I do own an Archos 504 PMP and to convert videos for use on that baby, I use a software called PocketDivXEncoder;
this one is able to resize, change the volume, encode in XVid, cut etc.
its great for basic conversion of for example AVI files to XVid for use on the Archos.
problem is, you cannot really fully edit a video, meaning cutting out sequences like commercials or stuff;
what it can do is cut off pieces at the end, somewhere in the middle or at the end ONCE;
basically you tell it what you want it to do to the video file and then it converts the video to that end, but you can cut pieces only once, so for several sequences to cut out, you would have to run it several times..

2) VirtualDub is great for fully editing avi files; you can mark what you want to have deleted and simply delete it then;
you only need to recode the whole avi stream afterwards but you can compress it with whatever codec you want to apply to it, both video (DivX, XVid, etc.) and audio (mp3, etc.)
problem here is, after you have edited an avi file, you need to recode the resulting rest again, this takes quite some time;

3) and this is the expensive solution: Sony Vegas
I do use this very very seldom, as it is a little bit more complicated (to say the least) than VirtualDub, and for my needs, the PocketDivXEncoder usually is sufficient, but Vegas is a powerful editing software that can do virtually everything to a video-I would say what Photoshop is for editing Digital photos, Vegas is for editing digital videos.
the advantage is that when you cut a piece from the avi file in Vegas, you do not need to recode the rest-you simply cut out commercials and save the rest as an avi file-its as simple as that.
plus you can mark in milliseconds IIRC, so positioning your cut markers is very very precise.
but as said, it is expensive.

for your needs, I would stick to VirtualDub, or, should you have Nero Burning Rom, there is a module that can basic-edit videos too IIRC.

I hope this helps, should you need some more tips regarding VirtualDub, do not hesitate to ask

cheers
BL

Or you can go really, really cheap and use Windows Movie Maker. Use the DVI option for a non .wmv format.

I'm convinced that the real skill is in the editing room, as no amount of skillful cinematography can cover up poor editing - but the inverse is true.

I found the criteria for what's left in is a super critical, ruthless examination at every scene and sequence with one criteria: Does this advance the idea of the film?

There is so much cool stuff one makes that is really, really....well...cool. And you desperately want to leave it in.

Some of the movies I made are too long by a third. I got so enamoured with the footage that I just stuck in most of the footage I took, when it is just gratuitous replay of the same event over and over again from different perspectives.

Adobe After Effects is another expensive option, btw. I have it, but need to purchase an expensive book to really understand how to use it.

@Dart: thats the problem with nearly all Adobe Products-you need to buy at least one big, thick, expensive book to get to grips with what the proggie does. I am currently trying to learn to use LightRoom to organize my digital photos collection and have bought a book for nearly 60 Euros to get an insight into that proggie. I hope the investment was worth it.

concerning our "problem" here, this does not revolve around doing a new film but editing an existing one with basic things like cut out a few minutes of commercials or pump up the volume a little bit or maybe resize the format of the movie.
I also tried the Movie Maker from Windows, but did not like it that much.
VirtualDub is way better and produces better results too.

@flanker: if you have a DivX encoded movie already, DO NOT compress it again using a DivX or XVid codec.
in all likelihood, this will result in picture and sound out of synch sometime into the movie.


cheers
BL

Can you simply load up a DivX file and cut it, then re-save using Virtual Dub BL?

Or is it much harder than that?

Tony

Hello Tony!

no, basically it is that simple;
you load up a divx movie, mark what you want to cut out and then simply delete this.
there is one problem though-as VirtualDub "extracts" the DivX file and "converts" it back to normal AVI for editing, when you save your edited file, you need to recompress it again using DivX or XVid, or the resulting AVI file will be horrendously big.

of course, there are several settings within the Video and Audio compression menu that need to be checked to make sure you get a synchronous video and audio stream, but this works quite nice in the new version of VirtualDub.

the proggie is easy to use, the time it takes to recompress though is a major drawback of VirtualDub for simple editing jobs, as it takes rather long to recompress a video stream....

OK, Good man BL.

I might give that a go so.


Tony

No problem Tony

if you run into any trouble, feel free to ask-I will try to help you with my basic editing skills and knowledge
other than that, there are good tutorials for VirtualDub available on the net.

BL

Hey BL,

What do I use to re convert the avi back to a DivX?

Any good recommendations?



Tony

Hello Toni!

you can convert avi back to DivX in VirtualDub itself.
there is a menu item called "Video" and there is a subitem called "Compression"
provided you have the codecs installed, which should be the case on your computer, you can select a range of codecs with DivX nearly on top of the list.
just use this one and you are good to go....

make sure to select "Full procession" though in the "Audio" menu as this should eliminate most synch problems between video and sound...

Ah cool.....

Not a bad program at all that...




Cheers for the help.

Tony