What tools would you use to edit home videos?

eco · 04-13-2009, 04:30 AM

Hi guys,

My son turned one and I already have over 60GB of video, most of it rubish cause my camera skills are /dev/null.

Anyway, I was wondering what programs you guys would recommend for croping, ordering, ... videos.

I'm not looking to make DVDs with fancy menus yet, just a good stable tool to keep the good and bin the rest.

Thanks for your advice.

sycamorex · 04-13-2009, 04:51 AM

Avidemux is probably the most popular program in this category. Check this link for some other choices.

lindylex · 04-13-2009, 08:57 AM

eco, if you know how to program or not afraid of it you can do some serious editing on yes I know don't say it Windows, using this avisynth.org.

The language is super easy to learn and with 4 lines of code you can do some serious editing especially on those really large files on a really old computer. Here is an example concatenating two different video files and overlaying your favorite mp3 on top of it.

Code:

a = avisource ("C:\images\demargo\MVI_0988.AVI", false )
b = avisource ("C:\images\demargo\MVI_0989.AVI", false )

combined = a + b

theaudio= MPASource ("C:\projects\ILoveLindyLex.mp3", normalize = false) + MPASource ("C:\projects\ILoveLindyLex.mp3", normalize = false)

final_project=AudioDub(combined, theaudio.Trim(0,combined.FrameCount())

Thanks LindyLex

i92guboj · 04-13-2009, 10:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eco

Hi guys,

My son turned one and I already have over 60GB of video, most of it rubish cause my camera skills are /dev/null.

Anyway, I was wondering what programs you guys would recommend for croping, ordering, ... videos.

I'm not looking to make DVDs with fancy menus yet, just a good stable tool to keep the good and bin the rest.

Thanks for your advice.

For advanced stuff most people use cinelerra, but don't ask me about it. I never used it and all I do with videos can be done with mencoder in command line (just cutting some pieces and that stuff).

There's also kino.

eco · 04-14-2009, 01:50 AM

Thank you all for your replies.

lindylex, thanks for the info but 'sadly' I don't have windows at home.
i92guboj, I tried them both and found cinelerra to be way over the top for my needs as you said it might be. It looks like I might be going the mencoder way if I can figure it out fast or I'll fall back on Avidemux.

Thank you all!

i92guboj · 04-14-2009, 02:00 AM

For the record, you can cut a section of a video with mencoder, without re-coding it (you'd lose quality that way).

I use something like this:

Code:

mencoder -idx original_file.avi \
  -ss 00:00:00 -endpos 22:22:22 -ovc copy \
  -oac copy -o destination_file.avi

-idx means reindex the file, so you can jump to any random position at any time
-ss is the starting position
-endpos if my memory serves correctly is not the absolute ending position, but an offset, counting from -ss
-oac copy -ovc copy means just copy the streams, do not recode

So, to crop from minute 7 to minute 9 you would so -ss 00:07:00 -endpos 00:02:00. Not excellent, but certainly damn fast and in any case it's enough for my needs.

eco · 04-15-2009, 02:02 AM

Thanks i92guboj, that will get me started nicely!