Ultimately, I want to pull videos off of my Tablo and put them on Plex, without commercials. I tried to do that with MovAvi and manually cut out the commercials, but not only does the quality drop, but the file is larger than the original. Does anyone have a suggestion for how to split up videos, paste them back together, and not lose quality or make larger files? Maybe a better setting or program?
This is harder than it sounds. In theory you might be able to rewrite some meta stuff and handle framing.
The commercial cutting routine in SurLaTablo forces a full transcode as it’s the easiest way to deal with randomly chunking the data. That does mean a quality drop unless you want new file to be bigger.
With that said, chunking the original mpeg4-ts into individual ts files kind of works, so you could maybe create a set of .ts files and handle has a multi-part “video” and maybe that would work (playing back to back hopefully with no gaps). I could see this being very error prone and irritating. And subtitles (closed captions) would still be very messed up and/or non-functional.
IMHO, best to transcode as it covers a multitude of sins.
(Note: SurLaTablo does not attempt to fix up subtitles in the case of commercial “zapping”)
Have you looked at MCEBuddy? It has the ability to strip commercials.
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AFAIK, it forces a transcode too (just guessing though).
I use Avidemux manually for shows I absolutely need a flawless copy. However it is a manual process - nothing automated. It makes for very smooth scene transitions after a cut based on using key frames while preserving the original resolution. Edited file is always smaller with Avidemux.
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And it handles mpeg4-ts? (I’m guessing yes?)
Yes Avidemux handles all the formats. When prompted to save the file after editing, one has the option which format to save it in. If in the input format, the save is instantaneous. If in another format, it takes the time required for transformation.
I prefer to do just the editing in Avidemux and then any transformation (like TS to MP4) in Handbrake (which gives me more options and control).
Now if the cut is on a non-key frame, the transition between segments is not that smooth. So at times I’m willing to sacrifice one or two non-key frames to have an absolutely smooth transition between cuts.
Unfortunately the transition is so smooth that my wife has taken to scene removal (asking me to remove those scenes that upset her in a film). One wouldn’t know there was a cut unless one knew the movie very well. So in one film, she asked me to cut out a scream and all one sees is a person ready to scream and then smoothly another person just simply walking away from the screamer - no scream ever heard, just a transition from one person to another LOL.
I also like the Avidemux function of substituting one audio track for another. I did many Christmas (fireplace) videos replacing the original audio with a selection of our own carols.
I use MceBuddy to transcode to MP4, remove the comercials and compress the files. It is a great app.
In my experience, Avidemux is the best way to do this.
It doesn’t transcode unless you ask it to and has a dead simple interface. Oh, and it is free!
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