[iBookUser]

HI,
I have a 688.9 MB mpeg movie that I would like to burn onto a CD, but it's too big (and I don't have any 700 mb CD's). All I want to do is remove about 50 mb of the large movie and creat a smaller movie, so I can burn it on two seperate CDs. I tried copying and pasting the smaller section into a new movie, this works fine, but when I save the new movie. It takes up as much room as the original! How in the heck do I break a large mpeg into a few smaller ones? Why doesn't copy and past work right? Please help.

Thanks,
Matt

You've run into bug (maybe "lack of feature" is a better word). QuickTime can do exactly what you want with native quicktime movies: Copy, create new document, paste, save, make self contained. It can do this with some non-QuickTime media types as well, but not all of them. MPEG files are one of the ones it can't save self-contained edits to. Joy. If you must get the file in a 650 MB mpeg, you'll need to use a media compression program to reduce the datarate of the file. Or use a similar program to recompress the mpeg into sorenson or another codec.

If you had Quicktime Pro you could export the movie at a smaller size or shorter frame rate and that would save you space. I fyou don't have QTPro, I would HIGHLY recommend getting it. Very Powerful.

[marnie]

maybe i'm mitken, but i believe that when I have tried to export an MPEG video qith QT pro that the audio is lost.
workaround?

thanks

[ydnar1]

Another cool piece of software is Media Cleaner Pro. I believe it costs $200 but if you can score a copy then use it to reduce the framerate of the MPEG file

------------------

[iBookUser]

Thanks for the replies! It looks like it would just be WAY easier to buy a 700 mb CD and screw trying to manipulate it! Boy, you'd think that that kind of an edit would be really simple though... Guess I was wrong.
Someone above mentioned losing the audio when you recompressed an mpeg into another format, this is true. I don't know how you would get around this.

Thanks for the help,
Mtt

To edit mpegs on a Mac, get QuickEditor from Switzerland. It is a shareware program free on the internet. QE claims to use QuickTime for import and export but manages to keep both video and audio. If QE can do it, why can't Apple? QE provides the same editing capability as iMovie with better transitions. However, I find it harder to cut and paste in QE than iMovie. I have not been able to export a clip from QE into QT or iMovie so that I can edit mpegs in iMovie.
Regards,
Eugene Rooke