Can I edit MPG-1 file directly? Like cutting, subtitle, transition, background music, naration. If so, can you recommend a good software?

-- Tony Tang (tonytang@tm.net.my), March 09, 2002

Answers

adobe premier.....ulead video studio.....ulead media studio.....mgi video wave

-- john boy (johnbmx4christ@yahoo.com), March 09, 2002.

While u can edit MPEG-1 this format is not meant to be used like that. MPEG-1 is used mainly as a distribution format, where it is mostly the end product. The absence of complete frame information between I frames makes editing only as precise to the nearest I frame, which on that on VCDs are typically once every 12 or 15 frames. It's ALWAYS better to edit the original AVI then encode to MPEG-1.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), March 10, 2002.

Another editor is at www.womble.com. They make MPEG2VCR, which edits MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video. It's the preferred MPEG-2 editor for a lot of us at the SVCD forum at network54.com/Hide/Forum/70438. They also make a MPEG-1 only version of the editor for $50 US. You can do cutting, merging and transitions, but I will warn you that guys who have used the transitions on MPEG-2 video have reported sync problems, so you might5 want to avoid that. Subtitles must part of the video image in VCD, so no editor will help you with that. By the way, MPEG2VCR (and I'm sure it's true for the MPEG-1 only version) is frame accurate. A lot of people think that you can only edit on an I-frame and that's not true, but very few editors support true frame accurate editing of MPEG video.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), March 11, 2002.

Thank you very much! You guys are really helpful.

-- Tony Tang (tonytang@tm.net,my), March 12, 2002.

Tony,

There is another software that I used frequently is "Virtualdub". It is free which you can downloaded from web. This software also check on compatibility. But bear in mind that it will covert your Mpeg file to AVI which requires large memory (Harddisk space), but the beauty is it can edit frame by frame, start of edit to end of edit (so that you can delete whatever unwanted sections). After which, you need to convert your AVI file to Mpeg file with TMPGenc so that becomes a compressed video file (Mpeg-1 format).

-- SY Chai (sychai@pd.jaring.my), March 18, 2002.