[newbie] Saving without transcoding after removing parts of a video?

[yetanotherlogin]

Hello

This is a newbie question.

Since I couldn't get VirtualDub to read an FLV file even after installing a plug-in, I opened it in AviDemux just to remove some parts of a file.

According to ffmpeg, the original FLV file was encoded as video=h264 and audio=aac.

After editing the file, I left video=Copy and audio=Copy, and set Output format=FLV Muxer, which prompted the error message "Only FLV1 & VP6 supported for video".

So I chose video=FLV1 and audio=MP3 (VP6 wasn't listed), and it does work, however, the shorter, edited version is about 60% bigger than the full, original file.

Next, I tried video=FLV1 audio=Copy: It's also much bigger.

1. Is there a way to get an FLV file to be smaller after editing out some parts of a video?
2. Since I assume transcoding means further loss in quality, when just removing some parts of a file, is it possible to copy video/audio streams to a new file instead of transcoding?

FWIW, I used 2.6 r8357.

Thank you.

[Jan Gruuthuse]

try for those with h264 and aac the MKV container.

[yetanotherlogin]

Thanks for the tip. I chose video="Mpeg4 AVC (x264)", audio="AAC (lav)", and container="Mkv Muxer". The output is indeed smaller than the original, as expected, so it looks like the FLV1 codec required by the FLV container isn't very efficient.

Finally, I left video=copy, audio=copy, and chose format="MP4v2 Muxer", and it's significantly smaller than the MKV test.

Thank you.

[Jan Gruuthuse]

>8>8 Finally, I left video=copy, audio=copy, and chose format="MP4v2 Muxer", and it's significantly smaller than the MKV test. >8>8

you could have done the same: video=copy, audio=copy, and chose format="MKV Muxer"