cut automation / beginning of the file

[Bad_Cat]

I'm searching the web for a few hours now / including this forum but it seems I haven't done editing for too long.

I'm trying to cut 214 frames at the beginning of about 40 files (music videos)
and I thought it should be possible to do this with some sort of script.

What I tried is dubman, but I can't figure out how to change
VirtualDub.subset.AddRange(214,...) so that it'll work for all clips (different
total length, of course).
can i get the total length using a variable and putting it as end offset?

Another question - is it possible to cut mpg without recoding (preferrable
using virtualdub)?

Thanks.

[setarip_old]

(I'm not being facetious) - In far less than the few hours you've been searching, you could have, using VirtualDub's or VirtualDubMOD's "Job Control" tool (Also set both
"Video" and "Audio" to "Direct Stream Copy") and manually entered each of the 40 (presumably) .AVI files consecutively, set your start and end delete points, set NEW "Save as" filenames - and then just once click on "Save" to process all of your files...

[Bad_Cat]

Direct stream copy isn't possible with mpg files.

You know that sometimes it's not about the time a different way would have taken... it's just that you sometimes want something get done a certain way... maybe because you know it will save you a lot of time and trouble later on.

and yes, I already thought of that. It's just that I thought it should be possible to maybe add the starting frame within e.g. Dubman.

[setarip_old]

No big deal but, you didn't make it clear in the primary question in your initial post that the 40 files were MPEGs.

Go to:

http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/

and download "TMPGEnc" and the scripting plugin for it...

[Matthew]

can i get the total length using a variable and putting it as end offset?

I recall wanting to do this at some point, and couldn't figure out how to do it in xdub. But you could get the length using an external program. For avi you could use YAAI but for a multiplexed mpeg I'm not sure.

And yes you can cut mpegs without re-encoding (e.g. TMPEGEnc, M2Edit, Womble) but you need to cut on i-frames (although Womble I think may re-encode a few frames if you don't cut on one) and you are probably more likely to experience sync issues etc.

[Pookie]

Mpeg1 or 2 ? Mpgtx will let you crop fairly accurately on Mpeg1 files via command line.