How do I split a VCD MPEG stream that's too large for one CD into two or more parts? Without decoding and re-encoding. I just want to find an I-frame in the middle of the stream and cut it in half there.

Someone suggested IFilmEdit, someone else VCD Cutter. The latter I haven't found yet online. The former would freeze up on my 1GB stream whenever I tried to fast forward or jump to a position, so purchasing that is out at the moment, if not even the trial version works.

Does anyone else have an alternative suggestion or more info on how to find the above programs/make them work? I can't believe it's so hard to find a program for this ridiculously simple operation.

-- Ulrich Schreglmann (ulrich.schreglmann@t-online.de), April 29, 2000

Answers

IfilmEdit freezes up????? never did that for me even on 2.5 Gigabytes files.

-- (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), April 29, 2000.

It does freeze up. So does the Windows Media player when I try to jump around in the streams. I watch the streams with the Xing Player, which works fine except for one little problem: When I jump to another position in the stream the video and audio are out of sync. I have to mute the player for a second to get them back in sync.

I don't know if the latter is the stream's fault or the Xing Player's. But my streams make IFilmEdit and the Windows Media Player freeze up when I try to jump anywhere, and it has nothing to do with size. (I just tried both programs on a little 6MB stream.)

Other editors don't complain, but they don't do what I want. Can anyone help?

-- Ulrich Schreglmann (ulrich.schreglmann@t-online.de), April 29, 2000.

I've tried alot of different MPEG Editors, and I think only iFilmEdit will do what you want. If your having problems with iFilmEdit, there is something wrong with something else in your system. What capture card are you using? Also, why not split the file when it's an AVI? Then encode to MEPG.

-- Michael S. Gilmore (mgilmore@san.rr.com), April 30, 2000.

I had your same problem. I-Film Edit works fine but your stream must have sequence headers, and your System must be "stable" (no strange drivers or unknown Direct-X installed). VCD-Cutter leads to unpredictable results. The final solution is M1-Edit. But it is really not cheap. You can download a demo (time bombed) at www.mediawaresolutions.com .

-- Brambus (kdwbr@tin.it), May 02, 2000.

For the stream problem you must set the sequence header.

With LSX encoder, set the headers parameters with the option "Put seq. headers before every GOP"

With Xing, set the Seq Interval to "1 per GOP".

Try that, and all the jumps in your movies will work fine.

-- Sebastien Lavigne (lavigne2@col.bsf.alcatel.fr), May 02, 2000.

Thanks to all of you.

At the moment it still isn't working. I'm not using LSX or Xing but the Panasonic plugin for Premiere. I'd get LSX, but for that I'd have to remember where I put the @#$$ Premiere CD I once had, or otherwise it won't install. (New computer. To my horror I remembered too late I put all the software I once installed into storage and can't get to it now for at least a month.)

I tried to demultiplex the thing and then multiplex it with Xing, but the result of that freezes Media Player/iFilmEdit on OPENING, not just on jumping, now bringing all of Win98 down with it. (I couldn't find any "1 per GOP" option within Xing, BTW.)

*SIGH!*

-- Ulrich Schreglmann (ulrich.schreglmann@t-online.de), May 02, 2000.

As for things freezing up, on a fresh install of WinME, iFilm Edit and TMpegEnc both froze up when I tried to advance in the movie (be it pressing play, moving a slider, changing the time, whatever).

Since people have told me to use only NT for video editing, I tried 2000 Pro. Both programs "work" now. Actually, in both of them, when I go frame by frame forward and backward, scene changes overlap.

Example, going forward, frame 18 is scene A, frame 19 is scene a, frame 20 is a scene a, and frame 21 is scene b.

Going backward, frame 22 is scene b, and frame 21 is scene b, frame 20 is scene b, frame 19 is scene b, and frame 18 is scene a.

SOMETIMES, in a certain frame, the picture will flicker between the scenes once. It's really odd. This seems to happen both in iFilmEdit and in TMpegEnc.

For the record, the VCD that I'm editing is a 1.32GB VCD of the movie Dune, 23.whatever fps, ntsc.

and yes, my email REALLY is nospam.

-- Ken Crouch (nospam@arnold.c64.org), March 01, 2001.

Whoa, that thread is from a long time ago. I forgot all about it.

Addressing my original problem, as far as I can recall I tried out all sorts of programs for DVD ripping back then, and I think it was DVD2MPG what installed drivers over the original Windows drivers that would make iFilmEdit crash. After uninstalling it I had no problems using iFilmEdit or the Media Player any more.

I haven't had your problem, mostly because I haven't been using iFilmEdit any more all that much. Whenever I made a copy of a DVD I used DVD2AVI to create a project file (and a WAV file) which I then encoded using TMPGEnc. I cut the DVD VOB file into its chapters first using SmartRipper (or DVD2AVI). The one problem I haven't been able to solve yet is synchronizing sound and image whenever the stream's "HYBRID."

As for your problem I haven't encountered it yet. You are aware, I hope, that you cannot cut between two scenes unless there's an I- frame there.

Another guess is that the MPG stream could be screwed up itself already through some faulty inverse telecining (reversing the 3:2 pulldown). If it's FlasK (with the Panasonic encoder) what made the stream and some option to the effect was checked, that option, as I recall, is crap. I don't use FlasK any more, but I recall that if you checked some "de-interlacing" field or other that algorithm would often screw up the order in a sequence of frames trying to make 24 frames out of the 60 fields.

So if it's that thing that's happening it's no fault of iFilmEdit or TMPGEnc but of your MPG input stream itself. But you'd see that if you watched the stream--the flicker, I mean.

-- Ulrich Schreglmann (ulrich.schreglmann@t-online.de), March 02, 2001.