I have seen several questions asked many different ways about what I want to
accomplish via Googling the newsgroups. However, even with all that help I
apparently cannot grasp how to create "mini clips" of an original media
file. I am using Vegas 7. My PC has a P4 2.4GHZ CPU, 1GB RAM, 3 200GB HD's,
etc. The mpg files that I am trying to chop into smaller clips were
transferred from VHS tapes through composite inputs on an ATI 8500DV AIO.
Several of these files just need 20 minutes or so at the end truncated as
they have nothing but black frames from unattended recording. At any rate,
can anyone guide me through the process of selecting a segment from the
original file and creating a new file of that segment without having Vegas
"render" the new file? No matter what I try, Vegas seems to want to
re-encode the selection, which is incredibly time consuming. Thanks!

RD

RD wrote:
The only way you can save a new file without rendering is to have
software that will do that AND to save that file without any paramaters
in the original file being changed other than to put in cuts.

The Womble Mpg Wizard has some 'smart render' settings that will allow
you to do what you want quickly and easily. Super quick creation of new
file. The progress bar fairly flies.

Can't say for sure, but Vegas may encode very quickly if you set all the
settings to produce a new file with all the exact settings as the original.

Ray S wrote:
Ray is correct. As good as Vegas is, it will still re-render anything other
than straight DV-AVI that you drop on the timeline. Since these are mpeg
(2?) clips, search for VirtalDubMod as it may do what you want without the
expense of buying something like Womble.

Mike

"Mike Kujbida" <kujfamNoSpam@xplornet.com> wrote in message
news:5082avF1f01hbU1@mid.individual.net...
Cutterman would be the free option with the most mention.
I prefer www.VideoReDo.com myself. They have a free trial
download.

VirtualDub Mod would require a rendering, in that it can only
work in and output AVI. It will convert the MPEG to its native
format and you can tell it what flavor of AVI you want it to
output, it can't avoid re-encoding the MPEG.

Luck;
Ken

Ken Maltby wrote:

Thanks for the info Ken!!
I forgot that VDubMod would only output an AVI so that's not really an
option for the OP.
I generallly use TMPGEnc for MPEG 1 but I'm assuming this is an MPEG-2
stream.
I'll grab Cutterman myself to play around with but, as you said, VideoRedo
may be the way to go.
To the OP, next time, get a miniDV camcorder with the pass through feature
and capture your VHS clips as DV-AVI. It makes editing MUCH easier - and
you can even use VirtualDub to cut/trim these clips if you don't want to be
bothered with Vegas.

Mike

Mike Kujbida wrote:
Ulead's Video Studio will trim MPEG-2 without re-encoding if the
settings are exactly the same. When adding the first clip to the timeline
or storyboard, it is supposed to ask if you want to change the project
settings to match. I have found this does not always happen in version 7.
If the OP has a bundled SE version or is willing to download a trial, it may
be worth a try. Here is the trimming technique that seems to work best for
me, again using version 7:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp....a54b6b52062413

"Fishface" <invalid@ddress.ok?> wrote in message
news:_jQnh.3292$1h.1549@trndny09...
Excellent information and thanks to all who made suggestions. My evaluation
of Womble was straight forward and the software did pretty much what I was
looking for. Although it didn't seem to "re-encode" per se, it did take some
time to create the new clip--only a fraction compared to the re-rendering
time I was experiencing in Vegas though. Maybe I just need a faster CPU than
a 2.4GHZ P4 (any suggestions?).

At any rate, the reason I went directly to MPEG-2 with the media transfer
from VHS was that I was hoping to save some time in the DVD creation
process. Video processing seems so time consuming that I was hoping to catch
a break there. It probably won't make any difference with DVD Architect
though, and I'm probably into hours of DVD layout creation and rendering
even with MPEG-2 files.

It appears that most NLE's are most flexible with the DV-AVI format so I'll
probably just run all of my old analog stuff through my TRV-38 and create
DV-AVI's per recommendation earlier in this thread. This is good to know as
I have a bunch of VHS and VHS-C tapes that I'd like to make clips from and
create DVD's. If anyone has any time-saving suggestions on any of these
processes please don't be shy.

RD

RD wrote:
The DVD creation should not consume massive amounts of time (other than
what you choose to put into layout creation) I was running a Dual MP2400
Athlon rig and the transformation of Mpg2's into DVD files was just
minutes with DVD Lab. No reason DVD Architect should require more time.