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Free Video Editing Software
spdpug98 - 16/8/09 at 09:47 AM

Is there any free good video editing software out there at the moment that plays/edits MP4 files

My video camera outputs MP4 and I can't even play it on Windows Media Player.

The camera came with Adobe Elements for editing but find it really really really slow and the burning to disk takes for ever

I used to used the Windows Movie maker with my old camera which was great, but don't think you can use it with MP4 (couldn't last time I tried)


gingerprince - 16/8/09 at 10:28 AM

You won't get software to edit mp4 and other compressed formats well. Due to their keyframe nature they don't cope well with being chopped and started part-way through.

Your best bet is to transcode your video to DV-AVI with something like Super, and then you can edit it in pretty much anything you like. You'll need a heap of disk space though.


spdpug98 - 16/8/09 at 10:33 AM

quote:
Originally posted by gingerprince
You won't get software to edit mp4 and other compressed formats well. Due to their keyframe nature they don't cope well with being chopped and started part-way through.

Your best bet is to transcode your video to DV-AVI with something like Super, and then you can edit it in pretty much anything you like. You'll need a heap of disk space though.


Thanks GP but that has just confused me even more!!!! Not very good with computers!!!!

All I want to be able to do is cut and splice the footage together and then burn to disk, nothing too advanced...as I couldn't even dream of doing that!!


gingerprince - 16/8/09 at 10:59 AM

Basically you can't just cut and splice mp4 files, and any standard video editor won't support this. So what you need to do is convert your MP4 file to a format that can be chopped about first.

If you download Super from here you can use it to convert your video into something that can be edited.

Load super, choose "AVI" in the top-left box, then "DV Digital Video" in the box next to it. Drag your file to the list at the bottom and press Encode.

The file that it generates you will be able to edit in Movie Maker, Adobe or whatever you're most comfortable with.

It's a pain in the @rse, but the whole point of MPEG formats is that they're designed for final presentation (internet, DVD etc) and not editing.


spdpug98 - 16/8/09 at 11:06 AM

Thanks, looks like I will need to improve my video'ing skills so that I don't have to chop the starts and ends of my clips!!!

Thanks