The goods - http://www.virtualdub.org/

The steps - http://www.livingasian.com/2007/07/virtualdub-fast-and-easy-way-to-cut-an-avi-file/

The steps in video because I know Americans don't like reading - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvmLefSMsBQ

The cost - http://farhad.videosift.com/member/Farhad2000/pqueued

Just a little insertion of advice, direct stream copy only works on cutting on I-frames, which means that the cut will often not be exactly where you place it. I've read alot of xvid encoder guides that recommend setting the I-frame interval to some ridiculous value like 300 which leaves at least 15-30 second spots where you wont be able to cut without re-encoding. I'm pretty certain if I remember correctly by using the keyframe buttons (the ones with the keys on them, heh) it skips to the nearest I-frame in the video.

I would have recommended the same method though, since virtualdub kicks ass.

Why this is so. P and B frames in a video rely on reference frames next to each other in order to determine what the current frame will look like, and why this sort of compression works so well. I frames are keyframes since they are what succeeding frames are based off of.

(I have been doing video editing for WAY too long)

If you install CCCP you can just use Windows movie maker to do it.
It will export the video as a wmv file though.

wtf how did i end up in this thread

Farhad .. that's perfect .. thank you very much!

Croccydile .. I've run into stuff like that from other videos I've converted and then edited but tbh you're talking way over my head. I guess I need to look in VirtualDub and set the i-frame interval lower?

thegrimsleeper .. CCCP looks good but I'm staying away from installing any codecs unless I specifically need one to render something (ie. no "packs"). Right now VLC handles whatever I throw at it.

Sorry, I'll try to explain that better.

The simple way to say it is with a video that someone has already made, there is nothing you can do about it sans re-encoding. The only way to make a more "editable" xvid/divx/x264 file is to shrink the GOP size at encoding time. There is no setting in virtualdub that will help you, you are at the mercy of the video.

Normally every 15th frame on mpeg2 is an i-frame so you can make clean edits every half second (which gives very good flexibility with edits), but on xvid/divx/x264 you can have anywhere from every 15th frame to every 300th frame... its a space saving thing with more advanced codecs and results in smaller files with better quality, but makes edits without re-compressing nearly impossible.

On the bright side, scene changes (or very heavy camera movement) practically always start with an i-frame though. It's difficult to explain without pictures

But if I found myself unable to crop where I wanted to because of the i-frames, I could still crop before and after (with virtualdub) the part I wanted and then convert the resulting file, yes? Then I could save time by not converting the whole thing and still have a clip I could chop at the frames I want?