Womble's MPEG Video Wizard has the capability to apply cuts for trimming the video source via three modes: N, M, and F. N is for "normal" (their terms) which plays (thus also allows for cuts at) all frames. M, "medium", plays only the I and P frames. F, "fast", plays only the I frames.

Knowing that the I frames contain the complete image (as opposed to P and B frames which contain deviations from the preceeding I frame - yes it's more technical than that but basically I'm right) it seems that perhaps there may be benefits to constraining editing cuts to only occur upon I frames. Is there any benefit, perhaps to further creation components later in the DVD creation process, to this?

I did notice that the I frames did not necessarly occur where I might have expected them to. I was nievly expecting a scene change, the start of a commercial for example, to force an I frame at such a start. Using the editor I could see that this was not the case. So, where I wanted to start a cut, the first frame of a commercial starting, did not correspond to an I frame. Do you have any thoughts on where the cut should occur in such a case? - myron

Honestly, I don't think N/M/F actually follow to I/P/B that closely. It's actually more of a quick-parse or quick-load operation like that of JPEGs in Nikon software. And I don't think it reads IPB all that perfectly either.

Cut wherever you want. The software is intuitive enough to make the new file properly. It will insert new I frames as needed and repair the stream at those points.

The heavy advantage to this program is the fact that it makes precise cuts like you desire, down to the frame.

Womble only re-encodes a frame or two around the edit. All the new frames are essentially I frames. The MPEG file does not require exact IPB length all through the file. They can be mixed. Because of this, the editor can exist as it does.

greetings and salutations!!!!

just thought id post this great little bit of info.

ive been using videoredo, it cuts mpegs, and is super fast. there is no converting and reconverting, you just wait for it to join the gaps where you cut and presto!!
good for captured footage from your your ATI.
u dont have to worry about iframes and p frames or any of that technical stuff.

here is the link, and try the free trial

http://www.drdsystems.com/VideoReDo/

LS any comment? - strangepork

It's a software I've toyed around with, and will be adding a guide for it to digitalFAQ.com in January.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/smileys/smiley32.gif
i look forward to it. right now ive been doing simple edits, and going straight to dvd

i like to capture using the new nero, firewire capture for guaranteed dvd compliant mpegs. Nero is trying to be everything to everyone with with its new one stop software upgrade. only time will tell...