Read the post re "Save As" by "jaegersing" here:

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=229824&Replies=1&Page=1

A great solution. DGrob

There is a way to save just a portion of the original file if for whatever reason you don't want to hurt the quality of the original by rerendering which is probably the best way normally.

However if that's what you really want to do, just preserve part of the orignial and not otherwise alter it what you need is a file splitter/joiner.

A web search will produce many. They all work pretty much on the same principle. You break up the source file into X pieces say 500K each then you end up with N parts.

The trick then is to determine WHERE to stop rejoining the parts. That just involves some simple math. Say you have a large file and divided it into 500 pieces. Take just the first 10, join them with the splitter/jointer to get a average of how long each part plays. Say you get an average of 4.2 seconds. Then all you need to do is the math to get to the point you want, then join that many back together. If you need to be exact you can either add or subtract parts or change the part size.

Like I said a lot of work messing with it but it won't damage the quality of the file because no rendereing is involved, more like chopping and gluing. It doesn't take long either, meaning a few minutes. Just that it seems like overkill for this kind of use. :-)

BillyBoy,

Your method sounds like you are tying to find that elusive "longer route to India."

Like someone mentioned earlier, all the original poster needs to do is place the portion he wants to keep on the timeline and save it to a new file. As long as the settings are the same as the original file, there will be no actual rendering, just a straight copy of the portion he wants to keep with no loss of quality whatsoever. Your method, if I understand it correctly, would not only take a long time to accomplish, but it would result in the actual file length not matching what's wriitten in the AVI file header and that will cause all sorts of problems.

James

Well, here's the original question:

"I know I can delete it from the timeline, but i was thinking the original file stays on the computer. Is there a way to just save the 1st half?"

I took that to mean save the 1st half of the ORIGINAL. Since others covered how to save parts of a file brought into Vegas, It offered a way to alter the original, in case that's what he wanted.

Are you now going by James, John?

No BillyBoy, I was in John's hotel room using his laptop when I wrote the last message. I've known John on various video forums for about three years and I'd met him once at NAB in Las Vegas a couple of years ago. I'd told him if he was ever in the Miami area that I'd like to take him to dinner. He's working here in Florida for a few days so my wife and I drove down to Homestead and had dinner with him, afterwards we all went up to his room. The subject of his departure from the Vegas forum came up and we logged on so he could show me a few of the messages. We saw your message about splitting files and I tried to get him to respond. He laughed and said he'd better not and told me to go ahead. He also bet me that you'd pick up on the user name and try to make something of it. I owe him $10.

James

Jem

You can do a search on the web for AVI Splitter I think this may do what you want.

Regards, PAW

Curious how some people overreact. I only asked if John was now using James and that gets translated into me "making something of it".

What I wanted to do is completely remove the part of the file I did not need..
(delete from the computer) .. (Keep the first half and totally delete the unneeded second part).
I was hoping that would free up some disk space..

The simple solution is to load this file onto the timeline, trim it down to the part you want to keep, render to a new file, then delete the original.

Any other program that purports to trim a video file will in reality do the same thing anyway ... make a copy of the part you want to keep and then delete the original.

jem,

I think I know where you are coming from. It seems like you should be able to cut out the middle without having to make an entire copy of everything you want to keep. Unfortunately, if you want to cut out 1 GByte from a 17 GByte file, then you need to take the time and space to copy 16 GBytes.

There might be a clever way for a software programmer to do this by simply changing pointers in the file's directory structure (possibly copying a small portion of the file at the edit point and inserting that into the directory pointer chain). However, I am not aware of any program that does this. It would be a very nifty utility indeed if someone would do it.

Lacking such a beast, the method suggested by Chienworks and others is the only way to go.

If you need to do this often, I find I can do it faster with a program called VirtualDub. It is freeware. You set it to Direct Stream Copy mode, increase the AVI Output Buffering 16 MB, increase Stream Data Pipelining from 32 to 64 buffers, make your edits, and then copy to a new AVI file. If you then copy from one physical hard disk to another, the copy can go quite fast. On my system, I copy at a rate of close to 180 fps, or about 6x real time.

If you do this in Vegas, copying to a different physical hard disk also makes a significant improvement in how long it takes (i.e., it takes far less time).

How about trimming the clip as needed and just saving with the 'Copy and trim media with project' checkbox checked? Then delete the original media file.

Gem, the adivise I gave is probably what you want. IF you want to alter the ORIGINAL file, meaning get rid of a portion you no longer want. Everyone else is suggesting cutting and trimming and then rerendeding in Vegas. You can of course, but that will take time (lots sometimes). The splitter/joiner aprroach it very fast if you know where you're going to break the file.

Assume you have a 40 minute video. You want to keep the first 20 minutes. If you have a decent speed machine it will take about one minute per 100 MB's to split it into smaller parts. Say you make 100 1 MB pieces. Then it takes about another 30 seconds to rejoin the 50 pieces you want. Aside from cutting the file up and putting it back together no other operation is perfomed on the file. Very simple, effective, fast IF you really do as you say. Divide in half, keep second part, don't want the first half.

If you mean you want to keep a little bit of some part of the original, then a few minutes down a little more and then some more further down then no, don't use a splitter joiner.

BillyBoy,

Let me say this again. If you use a file splitter as you describe, while you may still have the "original" file, it will be an illegal AVI file. If you take a 40 minute file and chop off the last 20 minutes using your method, the AVI file header of the resulting truncated file will still say it is a 40 minute file. This can cause problems when you load it into a program and the program reads the AVI file header and then can't find the last 20 minutes of the file. The only way to chop up an AVI file is to use a program that will rewrite the AVI header to correctly indicate its actual length.

James