VS 11 freezes when opening 20GB mpeg file

[marynowlan]

Hi there,

I've searched this board and did not find a similar question, so I will post. I want to edit/trim/split a 20GB MPEG file using VS 11 and the program freezes before it even opens the file. The file appears to be fine as a) it can be played with WinDVD, VLC etc, plus I can open the file in AVS converter. Is there a setting in VS 11 I should change? Appreciate your input!

[Ken Berry]

Sorry -- can't help. Some files will play fine in all sorts of players, but that does not necessarily mean they may not have a minor defect which makes it difficult to edit. Same may go for the converter program.

But I just *have* to ask: where on earth did you manage to acquire a 20GB mpeg file???? I am assuming it is an mpeg-2 file but that essentially would make it hours long if it is a standard definition file. So first we need to know exactly what version of mpeg we are talking about. Is it high definition/HDV mpeg-2? Or is it mpeg-4 (AVCHD?) which would make it -- to me at least -- even more miraculous... I personally have never dealt with an mpeg of any flavour longer than about 4.3 GB... And some of those cause an editing program like VS to choke... So 20 GB...???

[DVDDoug]

I can open the file in AVS converter...

Try re-encoding the file with AVS converter. i.e. Try saving in the same format with a slightly different bitrate. (I've used a similar method to repair some "problem" MPEG-2 files, except I've used SUPER to convert/re-encode the files.)

Since MPEG is lossy compression, it's generally considered bad practice to re-encode or transcode, but sometimes you can't avoid it...

The file size alone shouldn't be a problem.

Both VideoReDo and Womble include "MPEG Repair" tools. Both offer free trials, so they might be worth a try. Or, you may have better luck doing your editing with one of these programs which are specifically designed for MPEG editing. (I use Womble for MPEG editing.)