Video Editing to clip/merge without re-encoding?

[hoob]

Can anyone recommend a freeware or shareware tool for editing short videos on a PC, that has the ability to clip/merge parts of an existing file without re-encoding/converting the actual video data?

[Rehan]

What are the codec and file format of the videos?

[hoob]

What are the codec and file format of the videos?

They are MOV files in h264 created by a screenshow recording tool (Lotus Unyte.) Trying to clip out parts I don't need and merge the remainder into a single file, but all the tools I run seem to baloon the output file in size due to re-encoding. As it is my original file is 1280x800, 35 minutes long, and only 18MB.

Playing around with mencoder now but it's a bit obtuse if you've never used mplayer/mencoder before. Also trying ffmpeg with this command (to get the first minute of video, for example) but it just seems to copy the entire file:

ffmpeg -ss 1 -t 60 -acodec copy -vcodec copy -i input.mov output.mov

[flight878]

They are MOV files in h264 created by a screenshow recording tool (Lotus Unyte.) Trying to clip out parts I don't need and merge the remainder into a single file, but all the tools I run seem to baloon the output file in size due to re-encoding. As it is my original file is 1280x800, 35 minutes long, and only 18MB.

Playing around with mencoder now but it's a bit obtuse if you've never used mplayer/mencoder before. Also trying ffmpeg with this command (to get the first minute of video, for example) but it just seems to copy the entire file:

ffmpeg -ss 1 -t 60 -acodec copy -vcodec copy -i input.mov output.mov

Try NanDub (Windows only) or AVIDemux (Linux/Windows). They will both merge clips, but you must make sure audio syncs on the last half of the clip when merging is complete; if not, need to adjust time delay on second clip used to merge. Also, merging becomes finicky when the audio stream is encoded in VBR MP3.

MEncoder is the fastest way but there are commands you can use without ffmpeg.

Edit (I forgot): if you use mencoder, try this:

mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -idx -o output.mov input1.mov input2.mov

The -idx argument forces mencoder to build an index if there is none. This can help with sync issues on the latter half of the merged clip.

[hoob]

Try NanDub (Windows only) or AVIDemux (Linux/Windows). They will both merge clips, but you must make sure audio syncs on the last half of the clip when merging is complete; if not, need to adjust time delay on second clip used to merge. Also, merging becomes finicky when the audio stream is encoded in VBR MP3.

MEncoder is the fastest way but there are commands you can use without ffmpeg.

Edit (I forgot): if you use mencoder, try this:

mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -idx -o output.mov input1.mov input2.mov

The -idx argument forces mencoder to build an index if there is none. This can help with sync issues on the latter half of the merged clip.

Thanks... AVIDemux seems like it would work, but it just crashes on my system trying to play the original input file, let alone convert/clip it. Still struggling with ffmpeg to extract the clips too; it seems to complietely ignore the intended meaning of the "-ss" and "-t" parameters for some reason... Oh well, I will keep plugging away at it.