VHS to mp4 with edits

[AdrianW]

Hopefully this isn't a FAQ, it doesn't seem to be.

I have a few home video VHS tapes which I'd like to convert to media files so I can bin the tapes. At the moment I'm converting them to DVD using my DVD recorder and converting the DVD to mp4 using vlc.

Whilst I'm at it I'd like to edit out the rubbish, if only to reduce the file size. The DVD recorder's editing facilities are useless, VirtualDub doesn't seem to like the way the DVD recorder splits a track into multiple files and I can't find anything (freeware) to edit mp4 files.

Any suggestions on an alternatives to try?

[Adub]

Have you looked at AviDemux? It can edit pretty much anything you throw at it and it can convert the final cut to mp4 for you.

[AdrianW]

I hadn't, no, so thanks for that. It looks like a useful tool but unfortunately seems to fall over on the x264 mp4 file that comes out of vlc.

[poisondeathray]

Depending on what type of file your DVD recorder (some are quite bizzare variations of MPEG2), another approach would be to edit the DVD recorder footage then encode to .mp4 (i.e. skip the vlc step)

You might be able to use avidemux on the DVD footage, or mpg2cut2 (free), or videoredo (not free) to do the edits. These 3 have append functions, so if your recorder has separate files, you can join them as 1 big file

You could then feed that into a better encoder front end than vlc e.g. ripbot, megui, dozens of other choices....