Hi I have a load of avi files that I want to cut sections out of, for example the middle 20 minutes out of an hour long avi file. I want to retain the original quality and obviously do it as easily as possible (not too worried about processing time as I have an i7 pc with plenty of ram and can leave it running over night - so batch editing would be good too!). Have tried Tmpg express and virtualdubmod, both work fine for cutting out the required section of the video, however the file sizes tend to be relatively big and the quality is not quite as good. For example an 80 min vid might be 700mb, I cut out 25 mins, so would expect it to be 250 ish mb in size, however it is 800+mb and the quality is probably only 90-95% of the original. I am using single pass xvid encoding with the target quantisizer set to 1.0 for best quality. Reducing the quality does get the file size down, but obviously reduces the quality!! Is there anyway to cut the video directly without re-encoding it? Any other tools, tips or tricks?
Typical - just found this http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/cut_avi_with_virtualdub.cfm Direct Stream Copy was the bit I was missing!
If I was using VirtualDub I would set Fast Recompress and Smart Rendering (as long as no filters were being used) - that way the only re-encoding is on the cuts. As a side note, if the cuts were being made on key frames, Direct Stream Copy could be used and there would not be any need to select a compressor for recoding.
use avidemux, doesn't get any easier. The default is already set to copy the video/audio. It takes less than 2 minutes to cutout and save the section you want. There won't be no loss of quality.
