Editing VC1 Video

[mstrong]

I have looked for info on this and found a lot of posts from 2013 and nothing with a answer to my question. I edit video using TMPGenc Smart Render 5. It is a great program but I have run into a snag. It will not edit VC1 video files.

When I ran into this problem with TrueHD (which it also doesn't edit) I simple converted the audio into a lossless FLAC file).

Is there a lossless format I can convert the VC1 video to?

Is there a tool that will allow me to edit VC1 video without losing any quality? TMPGenc Smart Render is a lossless editor that modifies only the frames right before and right after your edit.

[nevcairiel]

Lossless video is much much bigger then lossy codecs like VC-1, so converting from that to lossless might not be what you really want to do.

[mstrong]

I have a NAS with over 30TB of storage so size generally isn't a problem. However, what I am really interested in is being able to edit VC-1 without losing video quality. Do you know of a tool that can do this? It would also be helpful if it supported common audio types as well - DTS, Dolby, AC3, PCM, FLAC, etc.

[Asmodian]

I don't know of any smart renders for VC-1 and by very large nevcairiel meant on the order of 500 GB per hour (assuming 1080p). :(

It will have to be a standard re-encode.

[mstrong]

500GB/hour... OUCH! That is too big even for my NAS.

I transcoded the VC-1 file to H265 using CloneBD. It took over 9 hours with a Core i7 3.0 GHz and 16 GB of RAM, so I assume it is a high quality H265 that it produced. I watch the video and it looks good. There are a few scenes where there is a lot of white dust from explosions and I couldn't see any pixilation - i.e. lots of motion without many colors on the screen. So I have a few follow up questions.

If I transcode again using H264 (which is predicted to take only 45 minutes), do I simply get a bigger file because the compression is not as good, or do I get a loss in quality when compared to H265?

Is there a tool other than CloneBD that someone could recommend?

[Asmodian]

You mean transcode the VC-1 file again, correct?

If that is the case then the H.264 file could be even higher quality, it depends on the bit rate and settings chosen. There is an amazingly wide range of possible qualities using H.264 or H.265, depending on the settings chosen.

H.265 is obviously better quality when the bitrate is a bit lower than what H.264 looks very good at, but at bitrates where H.264 looks very good it often looks better than H.265 (it keeps a little more detail and sharpness). The difference is relatively subtle now, assuming you chose your x265 options well (e.g. --no-strong-intra-smoothing is important at higher bitrates), but H.264 is still a very high quality option.

I strongly recommend Handbrake (https://handbrake.fr/) instead of CloneBD.

[SeeMoreDigital]

I have looked for info on this and found a lot of posts from 2013 and nothing with a answer to my question. I edit video using TMPGenc Smart Render 5. It is a great program but I have run into a snag. It will not edit VC1 video files.What sort of editing do you want to do?

[benwaggoner]

I dimly recall that Expression Encoder has the ability to append/trim multiple VC-1 sequences as long as all the picture parameters are the same. It hasn't been updated in years but I believe it is still available for download.

Adobe Premiere Pro also supported lossless VC-1 passthrough at some point, including "smart rendering" where it would reencode only GOPs that had been modified, but I have no idea if it is still supported in current versions.