VideoReDo

With my HTPC, I've been looking for one last Holy Grail. I think I've found it.

What I've been looking for is something to let me edit out commercials from the files created by SageTV. TMPGEnc is the most often referenced. However, it also has a reputation of being less than straight-forward to use. I kept on looking and finally ran across VideoReDo. VideoReDo is an mpeg editor. That's all it does. Simply, it will cut scenes from an mpeg file and create an edited mpeg file in seconds (well, single digit minutes, more later).

It has a simple (albeit oddly colored) GUI with simple controls. Just drag the slider along the time line until you find the place you want to cut. Click on the "Sel. Start" button. Use one of the quick jump buttons (10 seconds, 30 seconds, or 2 minutes forward or backward) and click on the "Sel. End" button. If one of the quick jump buttons don't take you exactly where you want, there's even a fine time line slider to zero in. And wonder of wonders, it works GREAT over my wireless RealVNC connection. The update is quick enough I can just slide along the video looking for commercials to cut. When you're done, click on "Save As..."

Back to speed. For my Half-D1 recordings, an hour of video is about 1,3xx,xxx KB. Cutting out the commercials reduces this to about 88x,xxx KB. VideoReDo saved these in just under 3 minutes. uLead DVD MovieFactory 2 SE doesn't blink on these files and will write them without re-rendering!

It has a full function 21-day trial period (go ahead as you install it and request a trial key to lift the 30 minute restriction). It costs $50 for a full license.