Need Advice On Editing & Capturing MPEG4 & MPEG2

[_cashel]

I'm really not quite sure where to post this, so if this isn't the right area, feel free to move it. I'm using an ATI AIW 9800 Pro w/ MMC 9.03 to do my capturing, and I am still pretty new to recording as far as setting up the settings to achieve the best quality/size I can. I've been using the MPEG2 DVD preset in MMC 9.03, which has been working fine, but I've recently tried the Home Theater preset (I don't remember what it is other than MPEG4, not on the main PC) and I like it. I have a few questions though.

I'd like to be able to remove commercials from the videos captured in the mpeg4 format, how can I easily do this?

I'd like to be able to keep a copy of the mpeg4 video (commercial free) and also burn an MPEG2 form of it to DVD. I tried editing out the commercials and saving the file as MPEG2 in the program Video Edit Magic, but I came across a few problems. First, the finished MPEG2 was roughly 13 gigs. That's just a tad over my limit :D. I tried to use the same/similar settings of the MPEG4 file (640x480, VBR I think was around 4mbps but I bumped it to 5, audio @ 256kbps) but the file was HUGE. What settings should I set to make the output file smaller? If it helps any, I'm recording the Battlestar Galactica mini series, so I'd like to be able to fit atleast a few episodes on one dvd with good quality.

The second issue I'm having is with the output video itself. I tried playing it in WMP10 and the Dvix media player, but the video is SEVERELY garbled. You really can't see anything clearly on the screen. What's weird is that I got this same problem when I tried to record the episode again using MPEG2 DVD as the preset on MMC. Any ideas on why I'm getting this? As I said earlier, I'm not on my main PC right now, but later today I'll try and get a screen cap.

Sorry for the really long post, I just have a ton of thoughts in my head relating to this, and I need somewhere to pour it all out and have it sorted out ;). Thanks.


Cliffs:
Using ATI AIW 9800 Pro w/ MMC 9.03
Recently started using MPEG4 in place of MPEG2 DVD
Want to edit out commercials in MPEG4 easily but don't know how
Want to create MPEG2 form of the above for DVD, but don't know to how correctly in Video Edit Magic
Getting severely garbled/corrupted video when saving it as an MPEG2 as well as when capturing to it.

[jggimi]

Hello, and welcome to the forum!

Your post got moved from General Discussion to the Analog Capture forum.

I'd like to start by suggesting you take a look at our Capture Guide (http://www.doom9.org/capture/start.html). The guide recommends that you capture in a lossless compression format, and then create your final form (MPEG-4, DVD, etc.) during post processing. HuffYUV and the nearly lossless MJPEG codecs also make editing easier, since you can cut on the individual frame boundary. MPEG-1/2/4 have frames that depend on previous frames -- Groups of Pictures (GOPs) -- and are not always easy to edit.

Please start with the guide, and perhaps look through our Capture FAQ (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32575), too. I think you'll find a lot of your questions are answered. Not all, of course, but after reading both documents, you may have a better feel for what questions to ask next.