Software for Digital Video

See also:

• Digital Video
• DVD Recorders
• Building Computer-based DVR (PVR) Systems
• DVDs

Video Software

• 2010-Sep-24: Digital Video Primer for Geeks is an introduction to the bits and bytes involved with digital video. [9389] [1]
• 2010-Jul-27: Boilsoft makes a number of video tools, including a video splitter and joiner and VD creation software. [9328] [1]
• 2010-Jan-10: The OpenShot non-Linear Video Editor for Linux made it to 1.0 by the end of 2009. [8908] [1]
• 2009-Dec-05: Slashdot discusses PC DVR software for all platforms. [8823] [1] [2]
• 2009-Nov-25: muvee's Reveal is video editing software that has support for up to 1080P video and has some Cuda GPU acceleration of preview and save functions. [8796] [1]
• 2009-Oct-02: OpenShot is a project to bring a non-linear video editor to Linux, it makes use of Python too. [8594] [1]
• 2009-Jun-05: A discussion about the codec industry with Dan Marlin from the Matroska Foundation. [8089] [1]
• 2008-Jul-22: The MKVToolnix package contains a number of command line and GUI tools for working with MKV files. [6559] [1]
• 2008-Jun-13: The digitalFAQ.com site has a number of guides to digital video, I used this one to convert VCD to DVD. In my case I was able to take a simpler approach, all the necessary data was in the first track, so I just used the Windows File Explorer to copy the *.DAT files from the CD's MPEGAV directory to my hard disk. Then I renamed them to *.MPG and verified that they really were MPEG-1 video files. Then made a regular DVD out of them using Nero 8 to build a simple DVD table of contents, transcode the MPEG-1 files and finally burn them to a DVD. I did this so I could play an old VCD in a current DVD player as the only device I have left that can play VCDs is an old Commodore CD32 game console. [6332] [1]
• 2008-May-03: XBMC is an open-source media-player package that originated with the XBox, now it is being ported to run under Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. [6035] [1]
• 2008-Jan-10: VideoSpin is a free video editing application from Pinnacle that is supposed to be faster and easier to use than normal editing applications. [4632] [1]
• 2007-Dec-29: Could MP3 encoding be causing a significant loss in audio quality after all? [4537] [1]
• 2007-Nov-02: Vegas Pro video editing suite makes good use of dual and quad core CPUs. [3759] [1]
• 2007-Oct-29: VirtualDubMpg2 adds MPEG2 support to VirtualDub. [3761] [1]
• 2007-Oct-29: VirtualDub is a free video capture and processing utility. [3760] [1]
• 2007-Oct-29: HandBrake is open-sourced DVD to MPEG4 video conversion software. It is capable of exploiting dual and quad core CPUs (see this article where it is used to benchmark the QX9650 Penryn CPU). [3758] [1]
• VLC media player [3542] [1]
• Amigoshare.com makes some video manipulation tools (a splitter, a joiner, a DVD maker and a format converter). I have used their Easy Video Converter to convert MKV (Matroska) format video files to MPEG for transfer to DVD, it does a good job and runs quite quickly. [3541] [1]
• AVSMedia sells video format conversion software, as well as a pretty decent video editing package (which includes the ability to include still images and do simulated pans and zooms within them). They have a fully functional try-before-buy version that just puts a logo in the middle of the output, so its easy to test to see if it will work for you. You can use this to create DVDs from source material that is in 16x9 aspect ratio, the trick with this is once you have placed the clip on the time line, right click to summon the properties menu and then from the properties dialogue select the "aspect" tab and set 4:3 as the "video proportion" (which seems counter intuitive). When you setup the initial project you should also set it to 4:3 aspect ratio, even though what you are trying to do is to make a 16:9 letter boxed DVD. [3540] [1]
• VideoReDo is a pretty powerful tool for extracting and deleting scenes from MPEG1 and MPEG2 files. This has a pretty convenient batch edit function that can also be used to split a single file into a number of smaller files (perhaps you have a few hours of vacation tape to edit, and you want to start by extracting the dozen or so interesting scenes into separate files so they are easier to work with). What you do is explained on their FAQ (its not immediatly obvious from the help file or program's controls that you can do this). Since the FAQ is a little vague, here's a recap:
• You will probably need to set some program options first, in the "General Parameters" select "Queue to batch clears cut list" and set the "Editing Mode" to "Scene Mode".
• enter the Batch Manager, and select a destination folder, then enter a "_" (underscore) into the "destination modifier" field, finally hit the "Done" button
• now pick the scenes you want in each separate file (you can select several per file if you want), by finding the start of the scene, clicking on the "Sel. End" button, then finding the scene's end and clicking on the "Sel. End" button and at last clicking on the "Add Selection" button. Repeat as needed.
• once your list of scenes is complete you hit the CTRL+B key (or use the File / Add Edits to Batch Queue... menu item)
• a dialogue will appear that shows you the file name it will save those scenes to, this should be in the destination directory you selected, the file name should start with the original file's name and then have an "_nnn" extension, where "nnn" is a number that starts with 001 and automatically increases each time you hit CTRL+B. Answer "OK" to the dialogue if the name is correct.
• once you have finished your selections you select the Tools / Start Batch Manager menu item again, check the "Run Silently" check box (this doesn't seem to do much) and then press the "Save and Execute" button and it will build the new set of scene files without needing further user interaction.
[3539] [1]
• How to convert a DVD for viewing on an iPod, this article uses DVDx, also has some other suggestions for similar software. [3538] [1]
• Pegasys makes the TMPGEnc DVD Author package. [3537] [1]
• Moonlight makes the Elecard MPEG2 capable player for PCs that has clip trimming functions. [3536] [1]
• MAGIX movies on CD and DVD, is reviewed here [3535] [1]