[Lucidwray]

Hi All,
Im have about 20 hours of video that i have on MiniDV tape that i need to import and compress to MPEG1. I have all the tools i need to do the import and compression. My problem is i cannot find an easy way to chop up a 20 -30 minute clip into 1 minute sections.

Currently I am importing the video with iMovie in OSX and then compressing it using Cleaner 5.1 to go to MPEG1. To chop it up for right now I am just importing it 1 minute at a time and stopping the import (which then creates a new clip 1 minute long) and doing this for the full 20 mins. This works ok but in between each clip you miss a second or so of video from the camera having to start and stop.

What would be ideal is a way to take the 20 min .DV file and have it chopped into 1 min clips before i compress it.

Or if there is some program that will cut down a MPEG 1 file (VCD settings basically) into smaller clips i could go that way.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

[lucylawless]

Rosetta has a feature to divide MPEG's based on file size (like cut into 5MB segments). Also, if you're not editing in iMovie, you can open the .dv files in the project folder with Quicktime Pro and cut off 1-minute chunks and save as dependent movies for Cleaner to take from there, but it won't be automated unless you're something of an applescript fiend.

[Lucidwray]

Ya i have tried just do it all by hand in Quicktime player. The pain drawback to that is as you chop off one minute of DV and then save it it takes a ton of space because the original 2gb file is still there.. so every clip you chop up takes another 250-300mb.... so it doubles the space i need to do one clip.

Not to mention that it takes what seems like forever to save a 400mb movie file..

Ill try Rosetta. that sounds like exactly what i need.

Thanks!

[lucylawless]

yeah, Rosetta is what you need, but just for the record, in the Save As dialog of quicktime pro there's an option down at the bottom for "save normally" which should be the default setting and this just saves a small reference movie. The other option is "save as self contained" or something to that effect, and that's what it sounds like you were doing

[Lucidwray]

Perfect!

I had known about the option to save files as dependent files but i didnt think that Cleaner 5 would recognise it as seperate files. I guess I should give more credit to Apple and Quicktime!

Works like a charm> I can import the full length file into a .DV file.. then use QT player to chop it up and drop the dependent files into Cleaner and im done! This is great! I love Quicktime!

Thanks for all yalls help!