[dalefox]

This is a really important, but very frustrating topic for me. I have hundreds of gigabytes of Divx encoded AVI files. I use Quicktime with 3ivx or MPlayer or VLC to play them with no problem. But if I want to do any simple editing (cropping or trimming), I have to go to the PC and use VirtualDub. Because if I use Quicktime or any other tool I've found for the Mac, I am forced to choose a codec and re-encode as the file is saved. For a 90 minute Divx file, this process may take 5 hours and introduce more artifacts and noise. Using VirtualDub, I can cut/crop/trim and simply resave the file without doing any recompression at all. And it only takes 2 minutes instead of hours.

Is there anything...anything at all that I should know about that could solve my problem?

Please, this is a dreadfully needed application on the Mac...

/dale

[Jacke]

Well there's the Quicktime Pro solution... With clever use of masks and QT Pro's editing techniques you would get a (reference) movie that displays only the portions of the video you want, but that would be only that; it wouldn't make a functional stand-alone movie with different (modified) data, only added metadata that instructs QT Player how to play it (meaning the filesize would still be roughly the same).

[dalefox]

So, again, QT Pro is not really much of a solution.

I am absolutely flabbergasted (sp?!) that this seems so difficult. Why has no one thought it a practical job to be able to cut and paste within a video stream and then save without recompressing?

I'm trying to build a home theater PC and would really like to use a Mac. But I think I'm going to be forced to use a PC simply because the tools are more available and commonsense.

Bummer.

Any other suggestions?

[Mike S.]

Diva will let you crop but I don't know if it will simply let you save the edited movie without re-encoding.

Can't hurt to try.

[Uncle Skeleton]

you can in QuickTime with Save instead of Export. Also please be more specific about what you mean by "crop" and "trim", as different applications (especially between mac and windows) use the terms differently

PS, it's rude to make multiple identical posts in different places on the same discussion board.

[dalefox]

Good point on the terminology. By cropping and trimming, I am referring to removing seconds, minutes or hours of footage from a clip. I am not referring to trimming any of the four sides of the image by a set number of pixels, reducing the overall image size.

Again, even with using "Save" or "Save As" in Quicktime, you are forced to change the original. It removes the AVI wrapper and replaces it with a Quicktime wrapper and a "MOV" file extension. Fine for the Mac, but not for the PC. While there is a version of Quicktime for the PC, it is a poor shadow of the product we know and love (sometimes!) on the Mac. So I'd be crippling the file for all my PC clients.

Any other tips on how to trim seconds, minutes or hours from an AVI/Divx clip and resave without recompressing or changing the clip properties?

Apologies for the extra posting.

/d

[Jacke]

Oh! I thought you ment the physical area of the video displayed... There is (sort of) a cumbersome way of doing it. You'll need to have the DivX component, make the changes you want in Quicktime Pro (copy & paste between movie files) then you choose "export" as DivX and in the Options dialoog you choose pass-through video, which will create a DivX avi file (note: I haven't tried this extensively, but on a small test file without audio it worked).

I don't think you can pass-through audio so you'll need the DivX Pro codec to re-compress the audio (*very* inefficient, lossy) in MP3. Or you could just tell the PC users to install Quicktime and you can do all editing in QT Pro and save as self-contained.

edit: if you install the 3ivx codec on PC it will play mov files in Windows Media Player (even with AAC audio), look at http://www.3ivx.com for more info.

[Uncle Skeleton]

in addition to the above (telling your PC audience to install 3ivx is the cleanest solution!), sometimes you can convert back to avi with ffmpeg (use the flags -vcodec copy -acodec copy)