Megui - Video File Format

[spanky123]

Hey

I got a few problems

Basically, what I'm trying to do is trim an mkv (x264).

I'm trying to extract the video with MKVextractGUI from an mkv (x264) that I encoded myself with MeGUI. When I extract however, the video is in the format of a .h264 and while MPC plays this fine, I am not able to do anything with it.

Why is the video extracting to .h264 ? Is it not possible to extract to .avi or something that VirtualDubMod can handle ?

In Megui, when I encode, I usually select MKV for the video 'file format' in the main window and then 'mkv' again in the 'AutoEncode' window. Does it make any difference what you choose in the 'File Format' for the video ?
Options are MKV, MP4 and RAWAVC.
:o

Some help please. Thanks

[Sharktooth]

mkvextract does what it's meant to do: extract streams from the mkv file.
you can remux the raw streams to another container with the appropriate tools, for example, avc2avi to mux the .264 stream to avi.
The "file format" in megui is the container choice. If you choose mkv then the strams will be muxed into mkv. The same applies for MP4. RawAVC is .264 raw stream (not muxed in any container).

[spanky123]

[/QUOTE]mkvextract does what it's meant to do: extract streams from the mkv file.
you can remux the raw streams to another container with the appropriate tools, for example, avc2avi to mux the .264 stream to avi.

I get a .h264 file. Is that the same thing

The "file format" in megui is the container choice. If you choose mkv then the strams will be muxed into mkv. The same applies for MP4. RawAVC is .264 raw stream (not muxed in any container).

Does it matter what container you choose for the video 'file format' part ?
Because later on you can mux to any container you want. Or is it better to use the same file format as what the final container (video and audio) is gonna be ?

After you've muxed to avi for example, is it possible to open in VDM or some other program and use 'Direct Stream Copy' to just trim the video ?

So far, I extracted .h264 and .mp3 from the mkv.
Then renamed the .h264 to .264 so that AVC2AVI (in MeGUI) would accept it.
Then exported as AVI (video only) which seemed to work fine - the avi was slightly bigger than the mkv which was to be expected (because of overheads).
Then tried to put the avi (video only) into VDM and although it accepts it with no errors, there is no picture being previewed.

I also tried importing with avisynth using only DirectShowSource(), but even with 'Direct Stream Copy' it would only output in uncompressed avi.

[spanky123]

Update

I've tried with MKV Merge GUI to split the video using timecodes of 10s and 20s, but it's very inacurrate (for me anyway).
Turned out with a 15 second first video and an 8 second video for the second part.

It does pretty much exactly what I want it to do though but it's just not accurate. Is there anything that's frame accurate or is mkvmerge good enough and I'm doing something wrong ?

Something with a preview like VDM would be better - if it exists.
Can VDM handle all mkv's ?

[check]

frame accurate cutting without re-encoding is more or less impossible. Because frame reference each other you will end up with broken frames unless you cut at an IDR frame.

[spanky123]

frame accurate cutting without re-encoding is more or less impossible. Because frame reference each other you will end up with broken frames unless you cut at an IDR frame.

Yeah. I was just told that cuts are made at keyframes, right ?

So that's probably why they were a few seconds off.

[Sharktooth]

in h.264 keyframes and IDR frames can coincide but are 2 different things...
However, yes .264 and .h264 are the same thing (you can swap the files extensions without problems).