Can anyone suggest a program to edit iphone video on a PC?

[Adv1sor]

I know it's not AMV related but, can anyone suggest a program to edit iphone video on a PC?

Preferably free:)

[Adv1sor]

Nevermind, it seems I can just use Ulead.

[Adv1sor]

or not... Ulead locks up with just a couple 1080 clips.

Any suggestions for a better program?

[Mister Hatt]

Treat it like a regular source in avs, render a lossless or w/e, and throw it into your NLE of choice.

[l33tmeatwad]

I know it's not AMV related but, can anyone suggest a program to edit iphone video on a PC?

Preferably free:)

The iphone recordes h264 video and AAC audio and stores it in a MOV container. If your editing software supports MP4 files then simply use MP4Box (or a GUI for it such as YAMB or MP4Box GUI) to recontainer the footage into a MP4. If your software does not, you can use AviSynth to reencode the video to a lossless AVI to work with.

[Mister Hatt]

Not necessary, if it reads mp4 it can read mov. Still makes more sense to do it in avisynth though.

[l33tmeatwad]

Not necessary, if it reads mp4 it can read mov. Still makes more sense to do it in avisynth though.

Not all software support all containers! I know several versions of Vegas do not natively support MOV and requires you to install a plugin. Also, sometimes the container can effect the way the software interacts with the file; for example, Premiere CS6 supports reading of M2TS files, but will cause a significant amount of lag reading from the container, but simply recontainering to MP4 fixes the issues.

Maybe to you AviSynth makes more sense, but if it's a simple edit of shot footage I don't really see the point since the software (if it supports h264) can properly decode the footage for editing (and takes things into consideration most people don't, like color matrix...which most people don't handle HD footage correctly since Rec601 is the default in AviSynth, which would be incorrect for HD footage!).

Just because AviSynth is versatile and useful for cleaning footage, it does not mean it's the right answer for everything

[mirkosp]

Editing with non intra-only h.264 files directly is pretty much as bad as editing with xvid/divx directly.
With the difference that non-linear seeking and backward speed will be even more agonizingly slow.

I really don't understand why people shouldn't prefer an intra-only stream whenever possible, makes editing much more relaxing and to the point.

[l33tmeatwad]

Editing with non intra-only h.264 files directly is pretty much as bad as editing with xvid/divx directly. With the difference that non-linear seeking and backward speed will be even more agonizingly slow.

Pretty bold statement that is way over exaggerated. It is true that there may be some speed and other advantages to editing with lossless AVI files, with the power of most computers these days that's not a huge issue. That said, it really depends on the software you are using.

I really don't understand why people shouldn't prefer an intra-only stream whenever possible, makes editing much more relaxing and to the point.

For some it's easier to just load the file and edit rather than going through extra steps to convert source and eat hard drive space. I would rather take the time to explain how to figure out how someone can use the existing footage or show them how to recontainer it if that is nessisary as opposed to having them go off on their own and reencode the footage into an MP4 container because I refused to answer their question to begin with (which I have had people I have helped before do when attempting to get them to use methods like lossless AVIs because they simply lacked the hard drive space).

You really have to look at the questions and what people are seeking out of them. I'm highly doubt someone is looking to create professional grade video from iPhone captured footage, so if they want to edit the footage directly I see no harm in pointing them to quicker ways that are less hassle.

[mirkosp]

It's not even about quality... if keyframes are too far from each other and you need to reverse speed/do heavy time alterations/massive overlays/whatever, the seek time will hit on you even with a good cpu, because you're limited by the hard drive speed too, and not just by the processing power.
Depending on what file they are using for editing, there may be literally hundreds of frames between keyframes, and that won't be fun to reverse or seek through.
Once upon a time I used to load .avs directly in premiere to edit to save space. With time I realized why people suggested lossless clipping on my own.

Then again with iphone footage it likely has plenty of keyframes (prolly 24 frame GOPs or something like that), so it shouldn't be too bad...

But anyway, when I say intra only I don't even necessarily mean lossless. Even h.264 or whatever else. Just... only keyframes, or possibly 1 or 2 P frames per GOP tops.