Basically, I need to get one 1.5 gig .avi-file down to two 700MB files for burning onto CDs. What’s the best way to do this? I used to do things like that with Nero, the one or two times it came up so far, but I don’t have than any more, so I’d need some software recommendation – ideally free- or shareware. Or is there a way to do this with Movie Maker? I loaded the file into it – which took some 15 min --, but then couldn’t really see how to proceed and didn’t have the time to get into it any deeper. Any help is appreciated!
I use Virtualdub for avi splitting and several other avi manipulations.
(BTW: In the future, be explicit about the OS you are using.)
Ack, sorry, I forgot. It’s WinXP. Thanks for the suggestion!
If you absolutely must split the movie into two shorter movies to watch one disk at a time, then you’ll have to get, and learn to use, some video editing software.
Personally, I don’t care much for them. They are hard for me to figure out how to use, and need plenty of disk space and system resources to work, may degrade the video quality, etc. But others here will be able to give you suggestions on a easy program.
However, if you have to get a monster file off your hard drive, and onto another system, then you can use WINZIP, or WINRAR, to create an archive file that’s split into sizes that you can quickly backup. A much shorter learning curve there.
Here is alist of download links for several different programs that will do that.
I’ve use Avidemux to cut sections out of videos. It’s fairly easy to figure out and it does it instantly so I don’t think it encodes them or creates huge temp files.
Seconding ftg’s suggestion of VirtualDub. It’s very simple to use for splitting AVI files, and it will split the file without the need for re-encoding, so it works very quickly.
Just make sure that you select Video > Direct Stream Copy so that it simply copies the video, rather than re-encoding.
I’ve used both Avidemux and Virtualdub and both are good programs and they are free. One of them, doesn’t come with codecs, so you’ll have to get them seperately if you don’t already have them.
You can get all them at Snapfiles
While I found them very easy to use, they don’t come with much instruction, so be prepared to play with them for awhile while you get the hang of it.