I am recording my OTA-HD in MPEG format using GB-PVR, I am wondering if there is a trimmer that works well for editing/cutting out commercials etc.

I prefer freeware/shareware but paying for it is no biggie as long as it works well.

TIA!

If you need just one tool that does it all, you can't go wrong with VideoReDo (http://www.videoredo.com/en/index.htm)(non-free).
There are other free tools but editing interlaced transport streams with an occasional bad frame without losing sync is hard with those...

I use MPEG-streamclip (http://www.squared5.com/) (free) (Mac and Win versions)
it's not the easiest to navigate (i just use the jump-to-time function)
but I find it's the only freeware program so far to properly cut and/or join MPEG-2 files without messing up the sync.
Just be sure to trim the files at keyframes (CTRL+K snaps to nearest keyframe)
They're usually +/-1 to 2 seconds or so for my OTA recordings

Thanks for the replies!

I love the Solveig AVI Trimmer (free and works excellent for XviD and no fuss) and they have an MM Trimmer (for MPEG but not free though has trial offer) and it keeps crashing one of my rigs.

I was thinking the HDD price is pretty low, converting everything to MPEG4 variants like DivX is way too time consuming so a good HD MPEG2 trimmer would be nice.

I dunno though.. a factor of 10 seems significant to me (I can compress mine using x264 and get between 1/8 and 1/10 final size)
I know HDD's are getting cheaper.. but you're still probably better off compressing

I love the Solveig AVI Trimmer...
It comes from the same people that wrote the only free muxer allowing WMV+AC3 in an AVI container. Zambelli (MS multimedia guy, posting on AVS and doom9) had high praise for the company products. IIRC, they are located in Siberia, the city Elecard is headquartered in (Tomsk).

If you want another free MPEG-2 trimmer, try Mpeg2Cut2, written by the author of MyTheatre. It has an ancient interface but is the best among free software in keeping audio/video sync...

I agree with recneps77 that encoding hidef is worth it (although I never managed to get 1/10 the size, even when downconverting to 720).
When exploring this path, look into x264 and few of its GUIs (MeGUI, ASXGui, etc.) As long as you use IVTC (i.e. movie content), you should be OK.

I played around a bit and the winner is MPEG2CUT2. Easiest to use, fairly accurate and the video/audio sync but the playback is not as good in search/skip/rewind etc.

Thanks again, it is exactly what I am looking for function-wise.

I used to use MPEG2CUT2, but it's horrendous for sync errors and it doesn't join the pieces properly. That's why I switched to MPEG-streamclip.
If you're just watching the MPEG's it's probably fine, but if you're encoding to another format (XVID, x264, etc) you'll find a large number of sync errors and spend more time fixing the sync than you would if you cut it "properly" in the first place ;)

I couldn't get the -streamclip one to work in the first place.

I have QT7 Pro but it wanted a specific version of QT ALT which I DL'd and removed the QT7 Pro but the -streamclip program crashed on me.

Any ideas ??

Also - as a side note, I am very interested in something that shrinks to MKV/MP4/AVI or what not - even 20-25% of the size while the 'deteriation' is not readily visible. What are you using ??

I am using Handbrakes but it seems to takes forever...

I'm using virtualdub to compress to x264 (but you can use any codec)

Yeah, the mpeg-streamclip doesn't seem to work on this laptop, but it works on my desktop for whatever reason (just crashes on load on the laptop)
It might be the newer version. I'll see if I still have the download for the version I have and you can give it a try.

As for compressing, I just use virtualdub-MPEG2, load up the file, add filters (deinterlace, resize, etc as desired/needed) choose codec and let it do it's thing.

x264 is much slower to encode and requires more cpu power to decode, but I get much better results than xvid. I get about 1/10 final file size with 720p video and about 1/6 file size with 1080p video (1080i deinterlaced)
If you want to go the virtualdub route and x264, you'll need 'x264vfw' from sourceforge.
Unfortunately (or not?), this version of virtualdub is not multi-threaded because it's an older version modified to accept mpeg2 files (the original does not). I just run 3-4 instances of it to get full encoding potential. (i.e. if you cut commercials out of your shows, leave blocks of the show separate, encode them, and then join)
This method also works a lot better if there are sync issues (due to signal drop/errors/etc) - just fix the sync in the 'bad' sections then join with the good ones.
This is handy if you want to encode several different videos at once, however.

I use x264vfw @ quantizer of 25 for my videos and get roughly 13fps (combined over several instances) @ 1080p (i deinterlaced) or about 24fps @ 720p
I'm not too picky at noticing every little artifact, but you could reduce the quantizer more (higher quality) if you aren't happy with 25.
I believe 20-22 should produce your 20-25% goal.
I use quantizer vs set bitrate as (my understanding is that) it will vary the bitrate, but keep "constant" quality. So one file with fast movement may be 500mb, but one with mostly stills or slow movement may be 300mb as there is less data required.

Edit:
V1.2 beta2 works for me when V1.2 crashes.
Try this and see how it goes (you dont have to install QT alternative to test, you just wont see any video in the window until that is sorted out)
http://www.lewl.ca/MPEG_Streamclip_1.2b2.zip

Well, there is some hope with your suggestion...the Handbrake I'm using is giving about 5fps on my kitchen computer which is not exactly slouch (C2D E2140 @ 2.4GHz) LOL

You can see why I don't want to bother with transcoding (for now).

Is it a multithreaded app (i.e. task manager shows 100% usage or 50%)?
If it's 50% you could run two simultaneously and effectively get 10fps (or about 3x real-length to complete)
Much like how I run 3 or 4 simultaneously at 3-7fps each giving me 12-28fps effectively (lower for 1080 vs 720)

both cores are max'd out according to speedfan

Ahh, well, if your computer's away from sleeping areas (fans can get noisy), you could leave it to run all night ;)

Was that x264 or xvid? You wont get as good a compression level, but xvid will (should) go faster.

VideoRedo is awesome for TS/MPEG editing... it also includes a simple stream fixer which is essential before doing any conversion.

I don't buy much in the way of video tools because there's a lot of freeware out there but VR was worth the price. I've been using it for several years.

The VR has made all my attempts pretty well succeses everytime I use it and the suto commercial feature is really good and even better when doing the OTA files one thing I would add is the new corel ulead vidio studio x2 I changed from ver 6 which did me for 5 or 6 years I guess and now all the new file formats are in this program so I should be set for another few years, the two together makes all I do so clean and easy.:)

I got a few OTA recordings archived and trimmed free of stuff I don't want.

I used MPEG2CUT2 because navigation was extremely easy. Shortly, I found out quite a few of them has bad AV sync an hour or so into playback which was very disappointing.

I finally got Streamclip to work, a bit of a pain getting around. However, the FIX TIME CODE feature actually can fix my MPEG2CUT2 recordings !!! Not I am flying.

I am not into compressing them so I cannot comment on whether the 'fixed' files are problematic or not. I will try a few with the smoking fast ATI AVIVO converter and see.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to earlier :p
MPEG2CUT2 is fast, but sloppy.
streamclip has worked flawlessly for me. (can't comment on the 'fixing' process, though)