Creating compliation video clips from source videos without needing to keep the source.

[John Rofrano]

[Mina Ward] “By researching on this forum I realised that I can’t delete the source video doing it this way. “

Your understanding is correct. Your project is just pointers to your source files and once you delete them they are gone so don’t do this. There is also no good way to “cut out” the parts you don’t need with modern camera formats which use interframe compression because the frames are encoded is such a way that it’s difficult to separate them.

[Mina Ward] “If I create clips and save them as a movie, would that solve it? “

Yes, that is your only solution. I would recommend that you render the section you want to keep into a new folder. Then you can delete the originals because you will only use the section that you rendered in your future videos. This folder will become the “keepers” in your collection. It looks like you are using a smart phone to record. My first advice is to hold the phone sideways because HD video should be wider than it is tall. This will result in a more “watchable” video.

It sounds like you are using Movie Studio. I would Render/Make Movie these sections of video that you want to keep using Sony AVC with one of the AVCHD 1920×1080 … templates. Pick the template with the frame rate that matches your source video. AVCHD should be very easy to work with later when you assemble your final project.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Wayne Waag]

What did you use to record your source footage? From your portrait orientation, it would appear its from a cell phone? If by chance you used a Sony Handycam and you simply cropped it in Movie Studio to appear in a portrait orientation, then you could use PlayMemories to do your initial trimming. The resulting files would be smart-rendered so there is no loss in quality, except at the beginning and the end of the rendered clip. Panasonic camcorders also have such software. Don’t know about Canon.

wwaag

[Bob Peterson]

I’m not sure why one would move to different software when John has already outlined a solution that will work within Vegas.

[Wayne Waag]

I’m not sure why one would move to different software when John has already outlined a solution that will work within Vegas.

Quite simply, Vegas does not “smart-render” AVCHD footage from Sony or Panasonic consumer camcorders. If you trim camcorder footage with these applications, there is no generational loss and hence no loss of quality in the trimmed clips. If maintaining the best quality possible is not a concern, then sure it’ll work. And if the footage came from a smartphone, as suspected, then such software wouldn’t work anyway, unless there are specific apps for trimming smartphone footage.

wwaag

[Bob Peterson]

So, the applications you are suggesting can use smart rendering to cut four short clips out of a one hour video? Are all four done in a single pass, or must the original video be smart rendered four different times? That is assuming, of course, that a Sony or Panasonic camera shot AVCHD footage.

[Danny Hays]

When you save a .veg file, you have the option to save media with it, and another option to keep only the used parts of source media with 2 second tails. You can do this and then delete the original source media.

[Wayne Waag]

So, the applications you are suggesting can use smart rendering to cut four short clips out of a one hour video?

Yes, you can easily cut individual clips from a video and they do smart-render, so there’s no generational loss except the few frame at the start and end of the clip. The software for Sony Handycams is called Play Memories and for Panasonic, its called PhotoFunStudio–what a name! Both are included with the purchase of the camera. I use them mostly for importing footage. Both convert the MTS file on the SD card to an m2ts file whose name is the actual date code which is really convenient. Works much like the old HDV Split for HDV video.

For the Sony software, at least, you can only do one clip at a time. You set the start point and then the end point and then render. It is frame accurate, so you can advance frame by frame to set your start and end points. You can’t do say 4 clips on a single pass though, just 1 start and 1 end, but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty quick and the renders are extremely fast–mostly just copying.

I must admit they are a bit clunky to use, but if you only need a small portion of your footage, or if you happen to leave the camcorder “recording” when it should be “off” like I sometimes do, they are very useful to get rid of the unintended footage. I’ve tried other 3rd party software, but the edited clips did not play well in Vegas. So, if you use a Sony Hanycam, its probably worth trying–if nothing else, for its import function.

wwaag

[Wayne Waag]

When you save a .veg file, you have the option to save media with it, and another option to keep only the used parts of source media with 2 second tails. You can do this and then delete the original source media.

This only works for a few formats like DV or audio wav files. It will NOT work for HDV or AVCHD files. You end up copying the entire clip.

wwaag

[Norman Black]

One can use something like TMPGEnc to “smart trim” long media into smaller parts. It works on AVC LongGOP file formats. Of course cut points are limited to the beginning of a GOP but when you are just trying to trim the excess this is not a problem.

https://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tmsr4.html

[Wayne Waag]

I have this and is one of the 3rd party software solutions that I mentioned that I had trouble with trimmed clips in Vegas (also VideoReDo TV Suite). That’s been a couple of years ago, so perhaps the later releases are better. I’ve got the latest update but have not tried it for trimming clips for use in Vegas. IMHO, it’s far better to use the freeware Sony solution, since it works without issue in Vegas.

wwaag