Edit and fine tune clippings

[Dalle 0]

In the Recording Edit window, it is possible to choose Normal (thumbnails show scene changes) or Fine, where thumbnails are about 15 frames ~ 0.5 second. However, I find that it is possible to move the playhead one frame at the time by using Option - left/right Arrow. But I cannot get it to place the clip markers at these positions; they seem to "snap" to the nearest thumbnail.

Have I overlooked some option to move the clip markers instead of the playhead?

I am trying to edit out some commercials, but I always end up with 0.2-0.5 seconds of unwanted stuff. So my workflow has been to "rough edit" the recording, convert it to .m4v using Handbrake (this really works the best, giving compact highdef files 300 Mb per 20 min.), then open .m4vin QuickTime Player X, where it is possible to cut out clips with single frame resolution (and add clips), save as .mov and then the final conversion to .m4v using Handbrake.

If anyone has a good, visual, mpeg editor with single frame resolution and eyeTV recordings compatibility, I'd love to hear about it.

Edited April 24, 2017 by Dalle
typos

[Ton 29]

I use "Video Cutter" from the App store. Positioning is a bit troublesome but depends on experience.

 

[jelockwood 3]

MPEG video files as used by EyeTV cannot normally be edited at a frame accurate level without being forced to completely re-encode the entire video file. I believe this is down to the fact that MPEG video files achieve some of their compression by only recording the differences between frames so you need a certain minimum number of frames to generate a complete image.

Therefore to do frame accurate editing would first require converting the entire video file to an alternative format e.g. Apple's ProRes, then doing the editing, and then re-encoding to a compressed format perhaps MPEG2 or MPEG4 again.

In MPEG terminology this is called a GOP - group of pictures. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_pictures

For what its worth I also find MPEG Streamclip to be an excellent editor and as long as you accept being limited to GOP level editing it does not need to do a full re-encode meaning saving your edits is very fast.

Edited April 25, 2017 by jelockwood

[Dalle 0]

@jelockwood Thanks for the explanation - this makes sense. I can't get MPEG Streamclip to work (missing the MPEG2 codec in the right place; I'm on macOS 10.12. I have the AppleMPEG2.component in /Library/QuickTime but cannot copy it to /System/Library/QuickTime due to SIP)

So I'll stick with my EyeTV->Handbrake->mv4->QuickTimePlayer->mov->Handbrake->m4v

[jelockwood 3]

@Dalle

I keep an older Mac on an older operating system so I can still run tools like MPEGStreamClip although it is also available for Windows. (You would then need the Windows versions of QuickTime and QuickTime MPEG2 component.)

You could also use the free Parallels from the Mac App Store to run a Mac VM guest which could be an older version of OS X.