Tech: Help with mpeg files

Subject: Tech: Help with mpeg files
From: Chris Partington
Date: 19 Apr 11 - 07:03 AM

I've got a long video mpeg file of a rehearsal that I want to break up into shorter bits.
I am relying on freeware for this and have downloaded FreeVideoDub from DVDVideoSoft. It's a *bit* cumbersome but free.
So I created some clips and saved them. They open and play back on FreeVideoDub OK.
Some of them play back on Windows Media Player, but two of them out of seven so far, played only the audio, not the video. (I have had this happen before with imported video files.) I fixed one of them by deleting the bad file and starting again, so it works now. It's very irritating to have to do this repeatedly so:-

My questions are, should I expect this to happen with any similar free software, should I expect files which are OK now to not be OK in the future, should I try a different peice of software.
P.S. I've changed my nom-de-plume from Chris P.

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with mpeg files
From: Will Fly
Date: 19 Apr 11 - 09:10 AM

Chris - I can only say that I use iMovie on a Mac laptop to import video files. I capture stuff I want from other sites by using Snapz Pro, and I can feed the files that Snapz Pro generates into iMovie.

iMovie comes bundled with the OS when you buy a Mac - I don't know whether it's available commercially for PC or not. Is there Windows Movie Maker software that you can get?

Free stuff is great when it works, but can be prone to bugs and glitches.

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with mpeg files
From: treewind
Date: 19 Apr 11 - 09:36 AM

Windows Movie Maker is free to download from Microsoft or other sites

I don't know if WMM it will do the job on MPEG files.

AVIdemux is also free and will certainly handle MPEG files, and is what I use because it's multi platform and the best thing I've found so far for Linux. But it does sometimes export files which play strangely on some players.

It's definitely worth trying others. IME they are all different and each has its own quirks, bugs and strengths.

I don't think bugs and glitches are the exclusive preserve of free software, by the way, and some things we simply take for granted, like millions of web sites, run solidly on free software.