about video assembly/merge and split operations

[dmdevito]

Hi,

I am using VLC almost everyday. I use too an TNT TV USB key to watch and record movies from TNT TV. So, I get some movies. The following ideas come from my everyday needs.

Sometimes I would like a way to do the following simple operations :
(a) to cut a MPEG movie file into 2 parts because it's too big (more than 7 Go, too big enough for my external hard drive storage),
(b) to merge 2 MPEG movie file parts into 1 because I have recorded the movie before and after the ads.
(c) to remove some part of a MPEG movie just to remove the inner ads.

I think VLC has already enough capabilities to perform these operations. And I imagine they can be performed simply.

I know VLC is a player, so I have imagined SIMPLE operations. It's not about developping a full-fledged video manipulation software, just SIMPLE operations.

Let's imagine the following :
(a) I open a file I want to split, I begin to read it and place the time/read cursor where I want to split and I pause the movie watch. Then, I select a menu item and VLC then splits the movie according to the time/read cursor into 2 parts.
(b) I open a file and I select a menu item to select another movie file, to tell VLC to append/add it at the end
(c) I select a menu item to tell VLC the period (start,end) I want to remove from the opened movie file.

Another option could be not to provide an GUI-enabled operations, but to provide only command-line operations to do so. I may be less work.

What do you think ? Any comment ?
Thanks.

Regards,
Dominique

[VLC_help]

There are already multiplatform MPEG splitters and joiners. So I don't see the point to add something like this to VLC.

[dmdevito]

There are already multiplatform MPEG splitters and joiners. So I don't see the point to add something like this to VLC.

Well, IMHO, this argument "we won't develop this feature, because other softwares already do it" has rarely been a good argument. It depends in fact on how developers are positionning their software.

And from my point of view, developping these features make sense if one is positionning VLC as providing enough out-of-the-box features for most common cases.

Dominique
http://www.jroller.com/dmdevito

[Alexsource]

Those features you ask are actually more relevant to a full fledged video editor / encoder (like avidemux, really nice and OS) than a full fledged media player with transcoding and streaming capabilities (as vlc is).

Actually, the operations you describe are similar to how you do joinning and splitting in tools like avidemux.