Editing in MPEG-2

[Stuart Kupinsky]

Is there a reliable editor that can capture and edit in MPEG-2 yet? Edition 5.0? Vegas 4?

[Alex Taylor]

I don't believe there is right now, as MPEG2 is a lossy format and therefore very hard to edit with (If I'm correct, it doesn't save full information for every frame, so your edit points will always be off), but I thought I heard something a few weeks ago about Sony or another company coming out with an editor that uses MPEG2. I just did a quick search for the thread but had no luck... maybe somebody else will know what I'm talking about!

[Hans Henrik Bang]

Just a little elaboration on the subject... It is not so much the fact that MPEG2 is a lossy compression method that is important here. DV is lossy too but that works fine for NLE.

The main difference as Alex mentions too is that MPEG uses "inter frame compression" whereas DV only uses "intra frame compression".

That basically means that in DV, each frame is independantly compressed and can thus be shown, edited, moved around etc.

In MPEG2 there are 3 types of frames I, P, and B where only I frames er independant of other frames. P and B frames only contain some difference information in relation to previous and following frames. They cannot directly be moved around without recompressing the whole thing.

My guess is, that to have an MPEG2 editor the best option would actually be to convert MPEG2 footage to some other format in the NLE, that does not involve intra frame compression. Otherwise you need to do some "on the fly" MPEG2 recompression when scenes are moved around, and that might involve processing time and possible quality loss.

Hans Henrik

[Ed Smith]

Its not always down to the software, its more down to the hardware. For instance Matrox do a capture card called Digisuite LX which allows you to edit in DV and MPEG-2 I-frame. This runs with Adobe Premiere, or Incite. Admittedly these can cost up to £2000+ and are used mainly for high end video production/ TV transmition. Here’s the link:

http://www.matrox.com/video/products/dsmax/which_platform.cfm

All the best,

Ed Smith

[Julian Luttrell]

You may want to look at Pinnacle's DVD1000 and DVD2000 (I think they are discontinued now, but should be available second hand - there's one on ebay.com at http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3412981949&category=180).

These babies offered frame accurate MPEG2 IBP editing by loading several frames into memory and then correcting the intermediate (B and P) frames to reflect the edit. All in real-time too, I understand.

Regards,

Julian

[Mike Rehmus]

ANy of the ex FAST editing system, Purple, Blue, Silver, etc., now owned by Pinnacle Systems will edit MPEG. Not inexpensive

[Stuart Kupinsky]

Thanks everyone!