Video Editing

[Techie2000]

Okay, this is something new for me. Anyways I'm making my February vacation project archiving all our old tapes from when I was very young into a couple DVDs. Right now I've been capturing all the video to MPEG2 (DVD Quality) using the RCA inputs on my WinTV PVR250MCE hooked up to a VCR. The TV card uses its built-in encoder chip to encode it to MPEG2. So basically what I'm ending up with is a lot of raw video encoded to MPEG2 and what I want to do is split it up and edit out any "static" parts and eventually have them on DVDs where you have a menu where you can select which segment you want to view.

What software would you guys recommend for doing this type of thing? I'd prefer to not re-encode it if at all possible, as I do not want to lose what little quality is left (VHS was defintely not meant to keep things archived in good quality).

[eakes]

For a start go here http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/ In the first section that starts out VCR..... etc. look for 'Merging MPEG 1/2' and 'Splitting MPEG 1/2'. I have never used the software but it may be something to check out.
For all things video go to www.videohelp.com that is the definative site as a collection of tools and software for manipulating video.

[Techie2000]

Thank you, I shall take a look at those.

[MorWired]

What software would you guys recommend for doing this type of thing? I'd prefer to not re-encode it if at all possible, as I do not want to lose what little quality is left (VHS was defintely not meant to keep things archived in good quality).Uline has an impressive suite, but it ain't cheap and it has a significantly steep learning curve.

http://www.videohelp.com/
The above link is an excellent resource under any circumstances.
Good luck and have fun. :)

[MorWired]

<strike>Uline</strike> has an impressive suite, but it ain't cheap and it has a significantly steep learning curve.

http://www.videohelp.com/
The above link is an excellent resource under any circumstances.
Good luck and have fun. :)Too sleepy to think.
Not Uline, **Ulead**. (http://www.ulead.com/runme_ns.htm)

Sorry. :doh:

[warlock56]

I've used VideoStudio 8 and Vegas 5 to do what you are looking at.

[Techie2000]

Just an update, I've already captured a couple of videos to MPEG, and realized I went about it the wrong way. I needed to capture them to raw AVIs then edit then encode to MPEG. Otherwise I'm encoding to MPEG twice and that's quality loss, which is bad. So it looks like I'm back to square one starting tomorrow.