Looking for something that will allow me to take movies in various formats, AVI, MPG, Wav, etc etc etc, and allow me to edit out various segments thereby taking, as an example, a movie that is 1.5 gigs and dropping it down to 1 gig. I don't want to do this by lowering the quality, but by cutting out parts.
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Is there a free video editing software ?
- Thread starter lwien
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iMovie?
Probably the simplest of all editing software is QuickTime Pro, but the features you want are not free until Snow Leopard.
Probably the simplest of all editing software is QuickTime Pro, but the features you want are not free until Snow Leopard.
I've heard that you can do that with iMovie, but that in the end, the edited version takes up just as much space on your HD as the unedited version.
I believe that is incorrect. If you are cutting stuff out and trashing them, and emptying the trash, you will be saving some space.
Ok, if I am incorrect, than I have a question. I am still running Tiger. Where can I get iMovie without purchasing iLife.
I don't understand where you're coming from with this iMovie thing. If you make a file smaller, it's smaller; end of story.
If you cut a part out, it's cut out and the file shrinks.
That's how cutting works.I don't understand where you're coming from with this iMovie thing. If you make a file smaller, it's smaller; end of story.
If you cut a part out, it's cut out and the file shrinks.
It's just what I've heard. I've never used iMovie, so I guess that what I heard is wrong.
Now my question is, can I download iMovie for Tiger (10.4.11)?
One app I've used a bit is MPEG Streamclip (free). I'm not a fan of iMovie. You can also do some searching on MacUpdate or VersionTracker.
Yeah, I just remembered it's on my install disc. Must have trashed it earlier. Just reinstalled it, and yeah, it will do what I want, but there's one big problem and that is after I make the edits and convert an AVI file to Quicktime, I lose a bunch of clarity and if I want to get the edited movie back to it's original quality, it becomes twice as big as the original before the edits.
Argggg..............
Angel, I'll give Streamclip a shot. Thanks for the tip.
Argggg..............
Angel, I'll give Streamclip a shot. Thanks for the tip.
iMovie, afaik, converts files you want to work with to DV format before you can do anything (which is where the size increase and quality decrease come in). This is unnecessary with stuff like MPEG Streamclip or Quicktime Pro available that can do lossless cut/copy/paste.
Great info as to the reasons why with iMovie. But, I'm having one helluva time trying to figure out how to edit using StreamClip, even after going over the help files.
That is one downside of the software, not intuitive on first use. To select a region you need to use the I and O keys. Just drag the movie index to the starting point of what you want to select then hit I. Then drag it to the end point and hit O. Then you can cut, trim, or whatever. If there's a specific function you're trying to do I'll try to help, but mostly I've just used it to trim out extra parts.
Thank you so much. Ok, I figured out the Ins and Outs and how to cut. But here's where my issue is. In order to save it in the new cut down edited form, I have to export it to a specific type file, such as an AVI or an MPEG file. When I do that, the end result is a file that is 5 times as large as the original.
One of the main reasons that I'm attempting to do this is to conserve some HD space buy editing down some very large files.
Edit:
Ok, I figured it out. Just had to do a "save as" in a mov. file. Weird that I can't do a "save as" in the original format, such as AVI without having first going thru an export with compression, which increases the size fivefold, but other than than it works great. As long as I do a "save as" in a mov. file, I can realize a smaller size in the edited down version.
Thanks again.