Trimmer Question

MikeLV wrote on 3/5/2016, 10:15 AM

I'm having a media management issue to solve. Suppose I have several different videos located in different places on hard drives and I want to use pieces of each video in a new video. Normally, I'd just copy the entire file into a folder for where I'm working on a project, so I'd end up with duplicate files. Is there a way using the Trimmer (or some other tool) so that I can isolate the section of a video file I want to use in my project, make a clip of that section from the video's original file location, and only save that clip to the project folder I'm working in. In other words, I don't want to copy the entire video file from one location to another. Suppose it's a 10 minute video and I only want 1 minute from it, it seems inefficient to have to copy the whole file if I'm not using the whole file. Any way to do that with Vegas? Trimmer doesn't seem to do it unless I'm missing something?

Edit: After doing some more searches I came across a similar thread. The suggestion at that time was to use a program called AVIDemux. Is that still the best program to use for trimming video files without re-encoding them? After digging around in the Vegas help, I did find the section about saving a project with trimmed media, but that only applies to certain file types. So if I have an H.264 MP4 file for example, it will copy the entire file, not the trimmed portion. So I think I have to use AVIDemux, or some other software for trimming files.

Comments

altarvic wrote on 3/5/2016, 11:24 AM

AviDemux
VideoRedo
ffmpeg
Vegasaur Smart Trim

MikeLV wrote on 3/5/2016, 12:09 PM

Thank you, what would you say is the best GUI for ffmpeg? This one looks pretty straightforward:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpegyag/

john_dennis wrote on 3/7/2016, 1:03 AM

Another way to accomplish this is to use nesting. Create and save a Vegas Pro project and do a rough trim of the clip. Drag that project to the timeline in the master Vegas Pro project and edit it just like it was a video. You can leave the video where it is. It won't be affected.

MikeLV wrote on 3/7/2016, 10:16 AM

I've never used nesting before, but by the way you describe it, if the video file is not affected, then that means it's not part of the project. IOE, if that video file were to be moved elsewhere, or deleted from its location, then it would become detached from the project.

I like to keep all my assets in the folder, or subfolder of the project file. I've started using AVIDemux and it works quite well for a freebie program. I can easily mark in/out points and save just that portion to a new video file for the project as opposed to copying the entire video file from one location to another.