Video trimming software?

BrianInEngland said:

It was already previously activated, that's the problem. I've not made any hardware changes to trigger it. Activated on 23 July after a clean install, working fine. Not working when I tried to it the other day.

Many options on here for me to look at so hopefully I'll find something similar

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I told you why. The new activation site was made possible by the person that worked with Dan. I forget which one of the codes you need to enter. I just know you need the correct code for it to work. I stopped at version 5 and if I had to reinstall VideoRedo I would be out of luck. If you want more info check out videohelp.com.

Winuser said:

I told you why. The new activation site was made possible by the person that worked with Dan. I forget which one of the codes you need to enter. I just know you need the correct code for it to work. I stopped at version 5 and if I had to reinstall VideoRedo I would be out of luck. If you want more info check out videohelp.com.

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Another possibility is that the activation site for VideoRedo no longer works. I was totally surprised when I found out the excellent video editing program was programmed and released by just two people. The owner and his assistant. I always thought it was released by a company with a large number of programmers. I'll probably get blasted by saying this but IMHO, VideoRedo was the best video editing program ever released.

Winuser said:

I'll probably get blasted by saying this but IMHO, VideoRedo was the best video editing program ever released.

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How long had you used it?

Winuser said:

I told you why. The new activation site was made possible by the person that worked with Dan. I forget which one of the codes you need to enter. I just know you need the correct code for it to work. I stopped at version 5 and if I had to reinstall VideoRedo I would be out of luck. If you want more info check out videohelp.com.

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The point is I had ALREADY activated it, using the actual licence key. It was fine when I did that in July.
I haven't re-installed or done anything for it to no longer work, but now it shows as not activated.
The activation is stored locally I believe, and should be a one-and-done activation.

It was the best £30 I ever spent on software.
Oh well onto other options.

I use Convertxtovideo as it has a perpetual license and an advanced editor.

From the screenshots I have seen of redo I think it is close to it.

Scroll down this page to see the advanced editing/features.

Mp4 Splitter/Joiner seemed to be ok when I tried it, you first split the files into the sections you want, then join the edited sections back together.
Not completely ideal but it's free open-source and seems easy to use.

Still looking at some other options mentioned here. Temperature in the UK is mid to high 30s (currently 22 at 6am!) so not able to get on the PC much. These things are room heaters!

Here in Greece temperature is 35 degrees Centigrade, even in the evening when the sun has set. At least we don't have 43 degrees, yet, as I read for other European countries.

cheaterslick said:

How long had you used it?

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I've had it for 15 years.
I agree that it is excellent.

It's still activated & working on my Windows 10 computers [one has VRD6 & the other VRD4].


Denis

Try3 said:

I've had it for 15 years.
I agree that it is excellent.

It's still working on my Windows 10 computers [one has VRD6 & the other VRD4].


Denis

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Well if you all know a way to run this, then let me know since I'd like to try it out. I never heard of it before until I started reading this topic here.

I've been partial to Avidemux for about just as long, with HandBrake coming along a few years later. Never really liked VirtualDub although I did use it every once in awhile

Just a crazy thought... If you have kept a disk backup from when the application was activated and worked, you can (if you have the time and patience), backup all your data, restore the backup. Then verify that the application is still activated, update Windows, confirm the application is still activated and working properly and finally restore your data. Yes, it will take a lot of time, but it is a legit way to use your favorite video editor again without illegally activating it. Plan B, just forget the old application and find a new one. If I had the time I would try it. Of course I would first do a full disk backup of the current system so if the plan doesn't work, I could restore it like nothing happened.

spapakons said:

Just a crazy thought... If you have kept a disk backup from when the application was activated and worked, you can (if you have the time and patience), backup all your data, restore the backup. Then verify that the application is still activated, update Windows, confirm the application is still activated and working properly and finally restore your data. Yes, it will take a lot of time, but it is a legit way to use your favorite video editor again without illegally activating it. Plan B, just forget the old application and find a new one. If I had the time I would try it. Of course I would first do a full disk backup of the current system so if the plan doesn't work, I could restore it like nothing happened.

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I wouldn't have a backup going back that far, and a lot of changes have been made to my OS since then

So plan b, find an alternative.

BrianInEngland said:

The point is I had ALREADY activated it, using the actual licence key. It was fine when I did that in July.
I haven't re-installed or done anything for it to no longer work, but now it shows as not activated.
The activation is stored locally I believe, and should be a one-and-done activation.

It was the best £30 I ever spent on software.
Oh well onto other options.

Click to expand...

BrianInEngland said:

The point is I had ALREADY activated it, using the actual licence key. It was fine when I did that in July.
I haven't re-installed or done anything for it to no longer work, but now it shows as not activated.
The activation is stored locally I believe, and should be a one-and-done activation.

It was the best £30 I ever spent on software.
Oh well onto other options.

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Something must have changed that is making the software see the computer as a different computer. If possible you could try a system restore with a image that VideoRedo was still activated. I have version 5 installed on my older desktop that is running a Insider build. If something was to happen causing me to need to do a reinstall I'm out of luck. I can never reactivate VideoRedo v5. I was hoping that a software company would buy the rights to VideoRedo but I guess that's not going to happen. IMHO, VideoRedo was the best software for cutting and/or stream fixing videos. This is my opinion and others are welcome to correct me but all of the software suggested are good but they fall short of the capabilities of what Videoredo can do.

BrianInEngland said:

I wouldn't have a backup going back that far, and a lot of changes have been made to my OS since then

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I didn't read this until after I posted about a system restore. I don't know what caused your activated version 6 of VideoRedo to deactivate. I have version 5 installed on my desktop running the Canary Insider builds and haven't had any problems with VideoRedo getting deactivated. If Dan's activation site for v6 still works I'm going to have to say your not entering the correct code needed. Check you emails to see what codes were sent to you and try them all. If you are determined enough to get VideoRedo working I think your best bet is to ask for help on the videohelp.com forum.

To split an MP4 file without recompression use MP4BOX. Like I said in my previous post it cuts at the nearest key frame. To find the frame numbers of start and end you need to see the video in some media player or other video editor. So you split the part of the movie and the ads and discard the ads. Then you merge all the movie sections. I know, this is not very convenient but it works. You can do the same in VirtualDub2 if you set the video to direct copy mode (no processing). Again it will be at the nearest key frames. If you want frame accurate editing you must switch to full editing mode. One trick I do is choose MJPEG compression or AVC (x264vfw) with very high bitrate to create a good quality master and then convert to AVC or whatever with Handbrake. I can also import the master file in VirtualDub2 and choose the x264vfw codec to export to AVC compression.

PS: If you process the video but select direct copy for the audio in VirtualDub2, the audio is converted to uncompressed PCM. If you select direct copy for both video and audio the original codecs are preserved. If you create a master file you don't mind for the uncompressed audio, you will compress it at the final conversion stage. If you want to process the audio separately (such as normalize it), you can save it separately with VirtualDub2 or extract it with Avidemux, process it in Audacity or Adobe Audition or whatever and then replace the original audio with the processed with Avidemux. If the video is in MP4 form and you process only the audio you can extract the audio, and then replace it in MP4BOX. To create a DVD you can import the master video or the final one in AVStoDVD

PS2: Using Avisynth and Vapoursynth you can edit in VirtualDub2 and frame serve the uncompressed video and audio directly to another program for saving to the desired format without creating a master. So you gain maximum possible quality. Also other applications usually render faster than VirtualDub2. So, if I edit standard definition video and I want a DVD, I frame serve from VirtualDub2 to a signpost file (frameserve.vdr). Only good old TMPGenc 2.53 could open these files directly and extract the video and audio data. So I create a simple script in Avisynth to just open this specific file, do nothing more, and save as script.avs AVStoDVD can open this one directly and proceed to create the DVD. Handbrake and others cannot open Avisynth scripts directly (AVS files), so I use avfs utility from Vapoursynth to open script.avs and create a folder with virtual AVI and WAV files. The AVI serves both video and audio and the WAV serves the audio part only. So I can open this virtual AVI file in Handbrake and create an MP4 or MKV with the compression settings I want. If I want to normalize the audio, I can open the virtual WAV file in Audacity or Adobe Audition. I can use Avidemux to join the video part with the audio part, if processed separately. I can also set AVStoDVD to create elementary video (M2V) and audio (AC3) streams so I can process the audio separately and then use IFOedit to create the DVD from the elementary streams without re-enconding. Yes, all of these are rather advanced, but I mention them just to have an idea when you feel comfortable enough to use them and get better quality. Also if you edit interlaced video don't forget to deinterlace it. It makes a huge improvement in quality. If you do it with VirtualDub2 filters, make sure you deinterlace the video before resizing it or cropping it and other video effects.

I don't know anything about other software but it really blows my mind that the best video editing software was programmed and released by only two people. The owner and his assistant. Unless someone can prove me wrong, VideoRedo has never been equaled by any of the major software companies.

I haven't used it, but I am curious. I might install the trial to see what is all about. VirtualDub2 is very good as well. It has many features. Pity it cannot save to MP4 and MKV directly and doesn't support nVidia CUDA. Yes, you can use an external encoder, but it is tricky to find the correct command line parameters.

spapakons said:

I might install the trial to see what is all about

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If so, do check Tools, Options.
I found it really difficult to use until I had set them up.
e.g.
1 Tools, Options, Navigation - I set those play, forward & back controls to what I regarded as sensible values [back 10 secs, back 2 secs, back 1 sec, play, forward 1 sec, forward 2 secs, forward 10 secs] because their default values made it impossible to get anything done.
2 Tools, Options, Charms - I set that column of shortcuts on the right-hand side of the window for those things I sometimes do.
3 Tools, Options, Custom buttons - I chose that set of 5 buttons along the bottom to suit the particular things I end up wanting to do all the time.


Since the Windows 10 ESU has now been extended to October 2027, I'll be able to carry on using VideoReDo v6 on my main [2016] computer successfully until then.
One of my Windows 11 computers is the same model as my main computer, I'm going to try restoring an image of the main computer onto that second one and seeing if the activation remains valid. If so, I'll update it to Windows 11 to see what happens and then update to 25H2 to find out if it maintains activation [with a fresh image at every stage].
I get the impression from those with VRD activation loss that it has actually been a Windows 11 incompatibility that has caused that activation loss. So I might have to leave one computer on Windows 10 / earlier Windows 11 and accept that it will not be used for internet work thereafter.


All the best,
Denis

Why keep it offline? Windows 10 still receive updates and even when they won't receive anymore, Windows Defender will still receive virus definitions updates. Microsoft Security Essentials for Windows 7 and Windows Defender for Windows 8/10/11 all receive the same virus definitions updates. I noticed that Microsoft Security Essentials sometimes cannot automatically find and download the update, but we can always download it manually and run the file to update.

spapakons said:

Why keep it offline?

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Because I suspect that I'll be forced to choose between keeping my OS updated & keeping VRD activated.
- I think the loss of VRD activation is OS-related because my Windows 10 computers have no VRD problems.
- Windows 10 will stay in support until 12th October 2027.
- Defender on Windows 10 will continue to get updates until at least October 2028.
- If my main computer [which will by then be the Windows11-updated device of my two Dell Inspiron 7779 laptops] gets a Windows update that causes the loss of VRD activation, I'll revert one of the laptops to whatever OS version is necessary to keep VRD activated & keep it at that OS version.
- To avoid eventual security concerns, I'll dedicate that unsupported-in-the-fullness-of-time laptop to video editing & TV control. I use USB TV tuners to record TV shows, I use VRD to trim them up & I play them back through the TV when it suits me. One of these laptops is held together by sticky tape & metal clamps so a sedentary job for it will be appropriate. So not having an internet connection for that individual laptop will not be a problem for me.
- Of course, I might be wrong & I'll never lose VRD activation.


All the best,
Denis