Editing your BIG VCD movies

Editing your vcd movies can sometimes be compulsory in order to get what you want from your movie. Fortunately there are free tools that can do the job for you.





Akmal Khan Sapay

.2003.06.19.

Creating vcd movies from mpeg clips is not that difficult. The problem rises when you want to burn your BIG VCD movie on a CD-R disk. A single CD-R disk can contain 74 minute movie but unfortunately not all the movies today are that short.

So the only way to make this possible e.g. to be able to burn your whole VCD movie on a CD-R disk is to split your movie clip into two or more parts (yes, there are movies which after having been converted into VCD format can take three disks). This way you can burn the whole movie on more than one disk without losing any data.

There are many free tools which can do the job for you, but I will describe here the way it is done in one of my absolutely favorite mpeg encoders e.g. TMPGEnc. This tool is perfect for both newbies and advance users and the result is amazingly good.

Cutting the VCD clip

Open the TMPGEnc and choose "Mpeg Tools..." from the File menu. A small window will show up where you choose "Merge & Cut". Next choose "MPEG-1 Video-CD" from the dropdown list if your clip is in VCD format otherwise choose the format which applies to your clip.

Click "Add" to add the clip which you intend to cut in parts. Click "Browse", give the output file a name and choose where to save it. Next mark the clip and click "Edit" and the following window will pop up:



Now on this window you have to tell the encoder where you want the clip to start and where to end. Drag the bar where you want the clip to start and click the opening square bracket " { " . see the figure above!

This will make a starting point in the movie clip. Now choose where you want the movie clip to end, drag the bar there and click the ending square bracket " } ". You have now told the encoder where to start and end the clip. Click ok and back on the Merge & Cut window click "Run". The following small window will appear showing you the producing process of your clip.



Video stream is produced first followed by Audio stream. Depending on the size of the output file it will take different amount of time to finish. An hour long movie can take several minutes, so be patient and don't start any other programes at the same time if you have a low processor like under 450 Hz.

Joining your mpeg clips to a single movie

As I said before you can not only split a movie with TMPGEnc but also join two or more clips to a single movie. Many people want to join clips for different reasons but no matter what the reason is, it is very a necessary option to have when it comes to mpeg editing.

Joining clips is much more easier than splitting them. In the Merge & Cut window click "Add" and add all the clips you want to join to a single movie, give output file a name and click "Run". The encoder will now produce a single movie out of the clips you have added. That is all to it!

There are many other tools for cutting and joining mpegs, but I recommend you start with TMPGEnc since it is very simple and gives you a good idea about editing mpeg clips. Later when you think you have advanced beyond the newbie stage, you can always try other tools with more advanced functions.

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Akmal Khan Sapay
Music Editor
Safis Web

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See Also:

What is a VCD? | Creating VCD Movies | Ripping VCDs