Basic Movie Editing without Transcoding?
Community Forums/General Help/Basic Movie Editing without Transcoding?
| ||
| I have a movie file which is in QuickTime MOV format, and I think it's using the Matroska codec. I just want to trim a few seconds off the beginning and end of the video. Can I do that without transcoding? Seems like it *ought* to be possible, but I'm not sure. Any suggestions of which app might enable me to do this? |
| ||
| What you're looking for is Smart Rendering, a feature present in not so many NLE (non-linear editing) software. I think Vegas, Premiere and the free VirtualDub have this; there are many others, but always for a single format and none for MOV. You might stand a better chance converting this MOV file of yours to a lossless AVI video so it doesn't lose any detail and becomes an AVI which is much more common; then you could use a tool that has Smart Rendering, such as the free VirtualDub. Additional info: http://www.videohelp.com - AV forum full of info and resources. http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en - Context menu tool to display information on a media file - very thorough. http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech3/amvapp-vdub.html#3 - Small article on VDub; shows where the "Smart Rendering" option is located. |
| ||
| On a related note without wanting to hijack this thread - with regards to what Kryzon is talking about - I've had a lot of difficulty finidng cheap convertors from MOV to AVI...most of them seem to be fake/malware apps - at least among the ones that say "FREE!" |
| ||
| Thanks Kryzon, that's what I needed to know alright. I'm somewhat familiar with VirtualDub so that sounds like the best starting place for me. @Matty: Indeed, movie convertors seems to be a real growth area for fake/malware apps. I'm using X-Media Recode to convert between formats, but I don't think it converts from MOV. |
| ||
| AFAIK Virtualdub only supports AVIs. If you don't mind getting your hands dirty with the CLI, you could try using the most excellent FFmpeg. If not, I've seen MPEG Streamclip mentioned on various AV forums for such things. You *may* be limited to cutting on key frames but it's highly likely that I'm talking from my nether regions here. I'd also recommend MediaTab as a convenient way of obtaining information about your media files. For future reference, Matroska (MKV) is a container format, like MOV, not a compression format. |
| ||
| Try SUPER for converting between almost any format: http://www.erightsoft.com/Superdc.html Terrible web site, but the download link is in the first block of red text, highlighted in blue -- the link is at the bottom of the next page. The GUI is also terrible, but it makes sense if you look at each section carefully in turn! It uses freely distributable software such as ffmpeg, just wraps it all in a GUI. I converted a huge 1080p MOV to DVD-sized AVI only the other night, but I recommend a short test before leaving it to run overnight -- I chose the wrong aspect ratio... doh. |
| ||
| And another godly send (I think it was in this forum that someoned mentioned it): FormatFactory - free converter between many formats. It doesn't convert 'to' MOV, but I'm sure it converts 'from'. |
| ||
| AFAIK Virtualdub only supports AVIs. It can only output AVI, but it's capable of reading other format videos like MPEG as well, which are then transcoded into AVI when you export them. |
| ||
| LOL...Context, dear boy, context. :o) If it makes you happy... VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images. ...From the VirtualDub site...Doesn't really help Gabriel much though, does it. ;o)[edit] FWIW, a quick google turned this up and a quick test on an old MPEG-4 MOV seemed to work fine. [/edit] Last edited 2011 |
| ||
| Great link, thanks Yan. I'll download FFMpeg and see what it thinks of my MOV, which could well be MPEG-4 since you say that Youtube got it all wrong. Re: Matroska, I just reported what YouTube told me when I uploaded the video as I thought it might be important. It was recorded with Quicktime on my Mac, so it's definitely MOV. EDIT: Yep, it worked perfectly. Thanks again, Yan! Last edited 2011 |
   |