VirtualDub, removing TV Ads

[roguegamer_2000]

Does anyone know why VirtualDub does not remove audio when frames are being removed from a pre-encoded video file?
(Please see the the versions I have below)

What I have done was record some TV shows in SVCD compliant MPEG2 streams with the MMC and what I want to do is convert these to DivX format. During this process I would like to Filter the video and remove the commercials.

I have tried removing the commercial frames, which worked fine, however VirtualDub does not remove the audio at all. After the first commercial break, the commercial's audio keeps playing but the Video is running the next scene in the show.
Using Full processing mode or loading the WAV file doesn't make any difference.

Also, I have made some SVCDs with TMPGENC and removing the Commercials has always worked perfectly with it.

Versions:
VirtualDub 1.5.3 MPEG enabled version
DivX 5.0.2
Lame MP3 (I have also tried leaving as PCM)


Thanks for any assistance in advance.

[libove]

Sorry to not have anything useful to add. I've had the exact same problem with the same software.

Has anyone found a software combination which correctly edit out pieces of a DVD quality MPEG recording from MMC to remove commercials?

How about a successful MPEG to AVI conversion, and then a piece of software to simply cut out audio and video pieces (commercials) from the resulting AVI file without further degrading the video quality?

-Jay

[Old_Dude]

I've recorded Star Trek episodes in mpeg1 formatt for VCD's (don't want to go to SVCD as I'd need 2 cd's for it) at 8mbs. I use the Pinnacle Studio 8 that came with my AIW9700 Pro and edit out the commercials then burn the VCD directly from there. I've had no problems with this. I use the higher capture rate for better image quality and the VCD's look great and commercials are gone.

[DrPug]

surely if you set "selection start" and "selection end" around each of the commercial breaks and delete the selection you should be fine?

[libove]

I hadn't tried Pinnacle Studio before. I was trying VirtualDub or TMPgenc or other freeware tools.

Pinnacle Studio, other than being painfully slow to parse through a ~6GB DVD quality MPEG file, worked flawlessly.

The one trick that took me a few minutes to figure out was that you don't *cut* from the input stream in Pinnacle Studio, you *copy* from it. Thankfully the software is efficient once it has done the initial very slow pass through the input stream, so copying the entire input file to the movie under construction and then clipping out commercials worked fine.

Moreover, despite the dire warnings from the software about how it couldn't be guaranteed to be able to use codecs that didn't come with it, the DivX 5.02 video encoder and MPEG Layer 3 audio encoder worked fine and converted ~3GB of Monk (the other 3GB were the extra hour I accidentally recorded, oops) in to ~360MB of edited episode at nice high quality.

Thanks for the advice!
-Jay

[roguegamer_2000]

Thanks for the replies.

I have tried Pinicle Studio 8 and its just more of a problem than anything.
Basicly, I would like to do everything in one step, VirtualDub is capable of doing this however it is not working correctly. I want to be able to filter, crop, resize and convert the Video in one step and have it do it in a resonable timeframe.

The best workaround at the moment is to use tmpg to re-encode the MPG first and remove the comercials. Then use VirtualDub to convert it to DivX. However this process is to long.

I have been searching over at this forum:
http://virtualdub.everwicked.com/index.php

I found a post once explaining that there seems to be some kind of incompatibiltiy between the way the ATI software encodes the MPEG2 format and how VirtualDub reads the stream. As far I could tell it was suppose to be corrected in the newest version which I am currently running. However it is still broken.

Also, I have found some other problems with VirtualDub. I noticed that it seems to be making the Audio the correct length but it seems to be missing large portions of Frames from the video. Its almost like the frames are dropped, however the MPEG plays back fine and the TV software never reports dropped frames.

One other program I have tried is MPEG Mediator. It does keep the Audio and Video in sync but does not allow all the advanced filters and Video croping tools.

If I have a chance sometime this week, I'm going to register at the VirtualDub forums and try to get some responces from over there.

I'll keep everyone here posted on what I find out.

Thanks again.

[libove]

I posted a bit too soon about my positive experience with Pinnacle Studio 8. While it did correctly convert to DivX and chop out the commercials, the resulting DivX video stream has absolutely regular jumps in it, I think exactly once every second. It's as though every thirtieth frame went missing. Audio and video are correctly sync'd, but watching the movie is a bit jerky of an experience if you get my meaning...
Sigh.
-Jay

[roguegamer_2000]

OK, I have this post up over at the VirtualDub forums and already had a reply.

http://virtualdub.everwicked.com/ind...ST&f=5&t=3673&

I believe the issues seems to be with the MMC capturing video at 29.97 fps then switching down to 24-25 fps whenever it wants to (because it doesn't seem to make a difference between high or low action scenes).

[alcuin99]

Try using dvd2avi.
http://www.doom9.org/mpg/dvd2avi.htm
Its fast, and will let you do what you want in virtualdub.

-e

[mihaimilk]

You could try vidomi www.vidomi.com . It's easy to use for 2 pass conversions

[roguegamer_2000]

Thanks,

I'm going to try those programs.

I'm waiting to here a real responce from ATI tech support on the Frame rate switching that the MMC is doing. That seems to be creating the problems.

[shasha]

Womble MPEG2VCR. Trust me, it is the best MPEG editor out there. It does a few effects, but it is the only editor that can edit without re-encoding the entire stream so the quality is still great and it is lightning fast. It is not like a regular editor though, you have to select Tools>Video Clip List to open your file, but after that it is pretty easy.

[roguegamer_2000]

Sorry guys,

DVD2AVI made a lot of artifacts for me at the same settings that I used in VirtualDub which had almost no noticable artifacts.

Vidomi didn't really do much for me.

Off to try MPEG2VCR.

Thanks again