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So converting to any of the standard "Windows" video formats won't help? AM I stuck with having to put up with wasting hours of computer time, given that I'm not about to spend a fortune on pro equipment?
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I cannot say wheter that helps or not. It may depend on what the poor programs do internally. I would research other affordable alternatives like the ones mentioned below.
... such stuff as dreams are made on
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A_Griffin wrote: why it takes so long to perform simple tasks
I like to make short videos to explain things -- though I'm not very good at it.
I have had those issues in the past.
I finally found a reasonably priced software that does screen capture, and imports exports video of all type and allows me to very quickly create a screen grab video and create a GIF of it. It's very nice. It does a whole list of formats (MP4, etc) and compression levels etc. Very nice.
Movavi Screen Capture & Video Editor 8 Personal Edition $49.95[^]
Comparative software like Camtasia is $300.
And I think this is easier to use than Camtasia.
Also, I think the slowness you've experienced is because it is
1. literally converting data to another format (your final output) - it has to convert at the byte-level
2. video is large amount of data (obviously)
3. could be a slow computer too and low amount of ram -- my 8GB i7 with SSD does okay with 30 minute videos.
more ram probably allows data to convert in memory instead of page to disk so much -- and if you're paging to disk, hopefully you have a SSD.
Good luck.
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I can see that converting from one format to another may take time, but I'm really talking about simply playing around with videos of the same format - usually mp4 - chopping bits out, and stringing them together.
I'll give the Movavi Video Editor a try, if I can figure out from their website if they offer a free trial.... ("Download for free"... FFS... of course I can download it for free, numpkin, but can I use it for free?!)
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A_Griffin wrote: but can I use it for free
Yes, in the past it gave a 30-day free trial.
And, yes, clipping bits out is very easy and fast.
I recently grabbed a video. Wanted the begin and ends trimmed off so I could just have the short middle part as a gif.
Click where I want to split the video.
Delete everything before that.
Click where I want to split the video again.
Delete everything after that.
Then export to GIF.
Easy.
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Found it - they offer a 7 day free trial.
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A_Griffin wrote: Found it - they offer a 7 day free trial.
I remember now. I tried it out and liked it so much I bought it.
You can add call-outs (text and other) quite easily but it is odd how you drop the item on the "track" but then edit it up on the screen after selecting it. That part was difficult to get going at first -- because I didn't know how it all worked but I like how fast you can make a video output to target format and be done.
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Most formats don't store a series of standalone images - uncompressed data like that is ENORMOUS. Instead, a complete frame is stored followed by a series of frames consisting of deltas from the preceding frame. The combination is used to generate the series of standalone frames you see. If you do any sort of changes, the entire series of frame + deltas, frame + deltas needs to be regenerated from the new first standalone frame (the new standalone frame probably was one of the deltas from the previous standalone frame). I believe there's also internal navigation data stored both before and after the video data in most formats.
'PLAN' is NOT one of those four-letter words.
'When money talks, nobody listens to the customer anymore.'
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Yes, that makes sense and can explain why chopping bits off the middle or beginning can force a complete recompile./ But if I'm only chopping a few seconds off the END of a video, surely it should be ale to cope wit that without recompiling the whole thing over again from the start?
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The prediction is usually bidirectional (combining frames from the past and frames from the future). So it's not necessarily as simple as dropping the end, earlier frames might have needed the end. It is of course possible to only re-compress the frames actually affected that way.. but software sucks. All of it. It's a law of nature.
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That is interesting. Seems like a very logical process as well but not one that I had thought of before.
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I bought Sony's Movie Studio Platinum some years ago. I am very satisfied with it. Well worth the price!
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Ta - but I can only find a reputable download from Amazon for that.. which is OK, but I'd prefer to be able to trial it for free first....
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I think it has to do with the nature of the MP4 video format. It results in extremely high levels of compression and that requires processing the entire video to achieve. Other formats do not compress as much and don't need to evaluate the complete video. They are probably not as lossy either, if at all. Formats used for intermediate storage, before the final version, need to be as lossless as possible to retain quality.
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SO would I do better to convert to another format before editing? And if so, what - given that I want to be able to play the final result on a PC?
I guess what I'm trying to find out is what the best format and software is for video editing on a PC? Given that a) I don't want to spend a fortune and b) by "best" a key metric is speed...
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Avoid Corel Video Studio - it's nice to use, but slower than a stunned slug on Mogadons.
Avidemux[^] can handle cut and stitch jobs pretty well, provided they are the same size, frame rate, and similar data rate. The interface is poor, but it's effective - particularly if it can copy the video and audio streams instead of re-encoding them.
It's well worth checking if your video card supports CUDA - many video apps can use it to offload the donkey work from the processor to massively parallel GPU, and that can save significant time.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Thanks! I'll give it a try...
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Another vote for Avidemux. It has a very clunky interface, but for trimming, joining and/or splitting videos it's quite excellent.
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A_Griffin wrote: I can get a 5 minute video, chop 30 seconds off the end in a video editor, and it’ll take 20 minutes to recompile the new video... wtf is it doing all that time?
I am no expert, but it is probably re-encoding the clip from the start. This is the simple (but stupid) way to do it. I know you have had other answers, but thought I'd chip in as i had a similar issue some years ago, with MPEG-2 video from a cam-corder that I wanted to trim bits out of, before committing to DVD. I eventually ended up paying for VideoRedo VideoReDo MPEG Video Editor[^] after reading, and confirming, that it somehow [*] blends the end of the first clip with the start of the second, without re-encoding everything after the join.
When I bought it only MPEG-2 was available. I see they have a TV suite that will work on H264 files (the guts of MP4 as I understand it).
[*] Something like: Insert more I-frames, and tweak the GOP count over a few seconds (?) to get the new I-frames synchronised with those of the second clip, then its a straight stream copy.
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That looks interesting - thanks!
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Have you tried FFMPEG? I was using it last night to trim the beginnings and ends off some MP4s and it was fast and easy. I put the command line into a BAT file and drag the videos onto that. I manually tweak the command line as necessary for start and duration, etc.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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I haven't - thanks! Something else to try 
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Given that so many 'tools' are nothing more than a front-end for either ffmpeg or mencoder, yours is the suggestion I'd have made.
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Interestingly I went down this road about a year ago. My requirements were a bit more wide ranging from WebEx screen capture sessions all the way up to crop and chopping clips from GoPro and my Sony HD camcorder.
I ultimately decided on Cyberlink PowerDirector. It's overkill for simple crop and chop clips. Does lean a bit more toward hobbyist/professional end of the spectrum. But I found it balanced in codec abilities, ease, and performance. It has a 7 day free trial. Also handy at remastering and producing the final cuts into multiple formats from H.264 to wmv to mobile friendly formats.
Honestly, I'm not sure you can do chop/cut editing on the fly unless your source and final production are raw uncompressed formats. Compressed formats require recompilation. To use a programmer like comparison, If you have a CSV file with 5 million rows in a zip file (because no one has ever had that happen  ), go in and delete 500k rows from the end of the file, it still requires the file to be rezipped.
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