Stitching together two or more MPEG2 files?

Shane Jensen wrote on 3/22/2006, 6:21 AM

I just spent the last three days editing my grandfather's 90th birthday party video from last summer and had it render overnight. The video is an hour and forty five minutes long and was shot with my MiniDV Sony Handycam using the wide screen 16:9. Looks really professional as far as I'm concerned. The total render time was seven hours and one minute, but that was nothing since I set it up before I went to bed last night.

Here's the thing, though. In the beginning and closing of the video I have plain text titles on black. In the beginning it gives the date and the title of what the video is before the actual video fades in. At the end of the video after it fades out I have another title saying happy birthday to my grandfather then a picture. I didn't see it until it was rendered out that with the wide screen the titles look smaller than they did in Vegas before they were rendered.

What I'm looking to do is adjust the sizes of the titles and render out MPEG2 clips of just the beginning and end titles and get them adjoined onto the rendered out video and clip off the ends on the finished video where I want to replace. I shouldn't have to re-render the whole video for seven hours because of those ends right? I remember reading about some program that can stitch together MPEG2 files lossless. What program is this and is it freeware?

Also, does the bitrate have to be exactly the same in each of the clips?

Comments

ScottW wrote on 3/22/2006, 6:46 AM

womble - and it's not freeware.

Shane Jensen wrote on 3/22/2006, 7:18 AM

Thank you. $100 is a bit much for me right now. I'll just have to re-render the whole thing today. Should finish by 5:30, until then I'll just have to find something else to do.

johnmeyer wrote on 3/22/2006, 8:02 AM

Write a suggestions (support button at top of this screen) to Sony that they add the MPEG-2 join feature to future versions of Vegas. It is one of the most frequently requested features, and has been for years, but the product manager seems to be totally deaf. Maybe they don't have a product manager. It sure seems that way.

Shane Jensen wrote on 3/22/2006, 8:12 AM

It would sure make sense that they add that feature. After the 100s of dollars that we spend on this software it doesn't make sense to me to spend another 100 just for some stupid feature that doesn't exist in Vegas. If this is such a highly requested feature I sure hope the Sony admins are seeing these messages and taking note of this for the next version. I doubt it, but one (or many as it seems) can dream.

Shane Jensen wrote on 3/22/2006, 8:35 AM

Just sent Sony the suggestion, not that it will do much but I figure if we all keep doing it collectively there is hope that there could be a possibility of them listening.

baysidebas wrote on 3/22/2006, 1:05 PM

Look at VideoReDo (videoredo.com). You can get a fully functional trial that lasts from 2 to 4 weeks. Enough time for you to do your work. And at half the price of Womble, you may decide to later purchase it, which would be nice indeed for the VRD folk..

John_Cline wrote on 3/22/2006, 1:30 PM

I also use VideoReDo and it works very well. I use it to edit MPEG2 and HD Transport Streams with AC3 audio and it works really well for that, too. Well worth the $50.

John

johnmeyer wrote on 3/22/2006, 1:36 PM

I also use VideoReDo and it works very well. I use it to edit MPEG2 and HD Transport Streams with AC3 audio and it works really well for that, too.

Is there any reason I should stay with Womble? I have been tempted for a long time to switch to VideoReDo because it seems to have so many other important features (like the ability to quickly remove commercials when I capture and real-time-encode off-the-air shows and want to burn them to a DVD-RW for later viewing).

John_Cline wrote on 3/22/2006, 1:47 PM

Well, one thing I really like is the user interface in VideoReDo, it is simple, elegant and quite functional. I haven't used Womble in a while, so I can't really make a totally fair comparison.

John

johnmeyer wrote on 3/22/2006, 3:39 PM

Well, one thing I really like is the user interface in VideoReDo, it is simple, elegant and quite functional. I haven't used Womble in a while, so I can't really make a totally fair comparison.

Hmm ... The Womble UI is the reason I don't like it, so your comment makes me tempted to switch over to VideoReDo. I think they have a trial. If so, I guess it's time to try it.

[Edit] Tried it (VideoReDo), but didn't like it. Primary reason is that you cannot have more than one MPEG file on the timeline at once, but instead have to edit each file and then add that to a "Join" bin. Makes it difficult to do an edit where you want to inter-cut multiple MPEG files. I don't do this often, but I have had reason to do it.

It otherwise looks like a good product.