Commercial free viewing...

[inabsentia]

I've been recording my shows in DivX compression to save room on my half-terabyte hardrive. I've been wondering how to go about editing out commercials in the recordings. It would not only save room on the hardrive, but enable commercial-free viewing. Does anyone have a method of doing this? ... at no software cost?

[Bigbird999]

Virtualdub Mod

Can be used to edit avi (divx or xvid) files. The interface is a bit clunky but it will work. Why not record in mpeg 2, edit commercials and showsqueeze to divx?

Virtual dub will also work, but not if your audio stream is VBR.

BB

[inabsentia]

BigBird,

I downloaded VirtualDub and experimented with it. It works very well. But I can't seem to figure out tag information. I'm wondering if BTV adds any tag information.. or if that is part of the "index". Is there a way to preserve any tag information when you edit an avi?

Robert

[Bigbird999]

I think any editing destroys the header info so BTV can't see it. All you have is the file name visible in the recordings view.

BB

[Deuce911]

If you recorded your files in MPEG you could use VideRedo to edit your files, it does maintain all of the BTV ShowData. They have a Trial version so give it a try.

http://www.videoredo.com

Mike

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by inabsentia

Is there a way to preserve any tag information when you edit an avi?

While you might not be able to preserve the tags in avi files, you can copy them back using third party software like BTVShowInfo or BTV-Negociator (link in my signature)...

[NickHark]

Originally Posted by Deuce911

If you recorded your files in MPEG you could use VideRedo to edit your files, it does maintain all of the BTV ShowData. They have a Trial version so give it a try.

http://www.videoredo.com

Mike

I'm trying VR because I need to fix MPegs that have incorrect duration. I think the UI is too cutesy having used TMP's products daily for a few years (Express, MPeg Editor and DVD Author Pro) I am used to the cleaner UI.

On the other hand, I am very impressed with the VR's Ad-Detective; the ability to find commercials and mark them to cut them out. I just recorded 16 hours of a golf tournement and it usually takes about 4 hours, more or less, to manually cut out the commercials using TMP's products. I've done it for all 4 segements of the tournement in less than 30mins of my time, with better than 99% success in locating the adverts.

I see that the new TMP products have a "scene detector" but in testing it I note that it is not as useful to me as VR.

VR has a convert.