Free video editing software advice for n00b

[Markbnj]

I have recently gotten into recording movies with Beyond TV. Is there anything free or low cost that I can use to edit the commercials from the resulting .mpg?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

its not automatic but its free. http://download1.pegasys-inc.com/download_files/TMPGEnc-2.524.63.181-Free.zip

once you install it go to file, mpeg tools then merg & cut. if you need anymore help after that let me know.

 

[Markbnj]

Thanks for the reply. I wasn't looking for automatic, so that's cool, and free is even better . I'll check this out tonight.

 

[aka1nas]

I usually just fire up virtual dub Mpeg. Takes about a minute to do the editing for a show, and then you can batch process several shows and re-encode them to xvid or something compact overnight.

 

[Markbnj]

Thanks for the advice guys. I tried TMPGEnc, but it failed to load the file that Beyond TV produced (an MPEG-1 stream I believe). I don't know if the filesize was an issue (8.2 gigs) or what.

Downloaded and installed VirtualDub mpeg version and it works like a charm. Very impressive Gnu license software.

 

[Relayer]

Womble is fast, but not free.

 

[Markbnj]

The only thing I don't like about Virtual Dub is that it only writes avi's. I downloaded Jahshaka, and it looks very cool, but choked loading an 8 gig mpeg. At least I think it choked, I terminated the process after about 15 minutes.

 

[xtknight]

What output do you want? Note .AVIs can encapsulate any codec you want, and can be easily de/remuxed into an MPEG container.

 

[Markbnj]

Well, I guess I was looking to keep the recorded shows in the original mpeg format that Beyond TV produces, but edit out the commercials. Am I better off creating AVIs?

 

[imported_rod]

Doesn't winXP come with a basic movie editor? Windows movie maker...

RoD

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: rod
Doesn't winXP come with a basic movie editor? Windows movie maker...

RoD

Yes, but it is not the best tool for mpeg editing.

 

[Traire]

Almost any free or low cost editing program will choke, or take forever to load, on an 8 gig mpg file. I would reccomend you try setting Beyond TV to encode in mpg2 at a lower bit rate. On my HTPC, I get an hour of mpg2 recorded TV at about 2gb size.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: Traire
Almost any free or low cost editing program will choke, or take forever to load, on an 8 gig mpg file. I would reccomend you try setting Beyond TV to encode in mpg2 at a lower bit rate. On my HTPC, I get an hour of mpg2 recorded TV at about 2gb size.

Free, maybe. Low cost, not necessarily. Both Pinnacle Studio Plus V10 and the Vegas + DVD lower-end are less than $100 and will do it (depending on the definition of 'low-cost'). There is a Linux app for editing that may be able to handle it too, but too lazy to check at the moment.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Markbnj
Well, I guess I was looking to keep the recorded shows in the original mpeg format that Beyond TV produces, but edit out the commercials. Am I better off creating AVIs?

Unless you are using some crazy card that can only record MPEG1, you should be able to use MPEG2 (which is generally just a better format) instead.

If you have a software-encoding card, you may be able to record straight to MPEG4 (DivX), if that is what you are going for. I think the latest version of BTV supports it out of the box, and there have been some plugins to allow you to do so. However, editing MPEG4 is generally more of a pain.

If you use MPEG2, I found this program for doing non-recoding editing: VideoReDo. $50, but it's INCREDIBLY fast at editing (since it doesn't recode the files, and you can batch queue up a bunch of edits and have it do them overnight or whatever), pretty easy to use, and the new version even has an auto-commercial-finding feature (haven't upgraded yet, so don't know how well it works). Best solution I've found so far for MPEG2 editing that's not a professional suite.

 

[Markbnj]

Thanks for the replies, guys. I think I am already recording to mpeg2, but I will check this evening. The 8 gig file in question was a 2 hour movie recorded at high quality, and for what it's worth, Virtual Dub loaded it nearly instantaneously. I don't think Jahshaka's problems loading the file are common to all free or low cost editing software. After all, the file does not need to actually be loaded, just parsed with respect to key frames. I think Jahshaka probably suffers from poor design.

As an aside, the first time I used Virtual Dub I edited out the commercials and then asked it to write the file as an avi. I didn't realize it was writing an _uncompressed_ avi, and the resulting file nearly filled my 350 gig WD .

 

[gsellis]

BTW, I think I remember that Tsunami also allows editing with the Express package. It is now sold at Fry's for $49.