Cutting, perhaps even splicing, WITHOUT RENDERING
 

Is there anyway of making a clip shorter, or perhaps even splicing a couple of clips, without needing to render?

This page about final cut
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60319
says that it is possible in final cut if one sets the output format the same as the input format.

Is it possible in vegas?
Is it possible using some other simple software?
Just the ability to shorten clips would be enough in many situations.

Yes, just save your work as a vegas project.

I would like to leave the results in mp4.

I have a camera that shoots mp4. I am looking for the abilt to trim and perhaps join (no fancy transitions) mp4 files.

I tried opening an mp4 file in a text editor. I would have thought that there is a sequence of characters that marks the end of a frame or keyframe. It should not be so difficult to trim a mp4 clip.

I would like to be able to do the same thing Timothy, but I don't believe it can be done in Vegas. It would be great if it could be done...I'd like to save portions of .avi files without having to render and lose their original quality.

Is there some other software in which it can be done?

There are surely frame markers in the files so it should be possible.

Tim

In the long list of features it claims to do video combining and extraction...

http://www.blazemp.com/ which sounds like what your talking about, but I'm not sure. Check it out. I did a search under .avi editors and that was one of the results.

The answer is YAMB FREEWARE
 

Thanks Jeff

I am looking for a mp4 editor. So I did a search based on your suggestion.

88 (this is a person's nick name) on this forum
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/grou...m/873000057731

Recommends
MkvToolnix
http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkv...downloads.html
It installed painlessly but it "muxes" to a different format. I guess it is rendering. The process is very fast and if it worked it would do for my purposes but the resultant file does not seem to be an mp4 file. 88 says that the mkv files can just be renamed as mp4 files that will play in an Ipod. I do not have anything made by Apple so I can't check but windows media player, Vegas and Quicktime do not recognise the muxed files.

88 Also recommends MP4Box which is a command line program and I did not figure how to use it but, the solution seems to be YAMB which is a grafical user interface for MP4Box.
http://yamb.unite-video.com/features.html
This splits Mp4 files into shorter files, and compbines them too, all very quickly.

YAMB is highly recommended and FREE.

It says that it works on avi's too, so I recommend you take a look.

Tim

VirtualDub (http://www.virtualdub.org/) will cut AVI files (and splice too, if they are identical in format), use Direct Stream Copy mode to avoid re-rendering.

Womble MPEG Video Wizard (http://www.womble.com/) will cut and splice MPEG2 files. Womble is designed to avoid re-rendering as much as possible. (It also does a great job at repairing weirdly formatted MPEG files.)

Quicktime Pro (from Apple) will cut MOV files. Don't know about splicing.

I hear many great things about MPEG Streamclip (http://www.squared5.com/) but have not used it myself.

I think Vegas will do "smart" rendering , ie. not re-render, if the input and output formats are DV AVI.

Thanks very much. I tried MPEG Streamclip and found that while it does not seem to do MP4 it does work great on Avi and includes a player.

I think that there is an extended versio of Virtual Dubb somewhere that can open mp4 files. I am not sure whether it can cut them.

I am guessing that quick time pro will cut mp4 files but I have not managed to work out how much it costs.

> I think Vegas will do "smart" rendering , ie. not re-render, if the input and output formats are DV AVI.

Too bad it wont smart render mp4.

Thanks again,

Tim

Thanks, Gian...great little tools! Also Thanks Tim, I'll try that in Vegas!