MPEG - How to split by scene

[StewartTurner]

I decided to start capturing my DV video as high quality MPEG to save on disk space and maximise the number of projects I could work on. I did a little test, and read this forum so I'm happy that the quality is acceptable.

So last night I tried to capture an hour's worth. I found out that when you choose MPEG as the format, the split by scene box is disabled so it captures it as a single MPEG file.

Not to worry, I thought. Once captured, you can choose to split by scene, so that's what I did. Unfortunately, that doesn't split the MPEG file, it just splits out all the scene changes as separate references to the large file with the start and finish sliders at the split points for each "clip". When you're dealing with a 3 second "clip" in a 1 hour movie it's impossible to set the start and end points for the clip with the sliders.

Has anyone overcome this? (I use VS7)

Thanks,
Stewart[/url]

[THoff]

You can change the zoom level down to single frames in the timeline by clicking on the "Zoom To" icon to the left of the timeline itself. If you do that, you can set the Mark In and Mark Out positions exactly where you want them.

[BrianCee]

Have a look at the "Screen Views 2" page on my Website and you will see the controls for expanding the timeline, if you expand to '1 frame' and then click on the clip in the timeline you will see yellow 'handles' appear at each end of the clip, hover your cursor over these handles it will change to a sideways arrow - click and drag the handle one frame at a time to get to the exact point you wish to trim.

Alternatively use the scissors tool to cut pieces from the middle of a clip to one frame accuracy.