As a newish comedian I like taping my big sets. But when you’re your own cameraman it isn’t easy. Here I have an MP4 with about 7 minutes of footage I want, but with two minutes at the beginning and end I don’t.
What can I use?
BTW, Windows Movie Maker refuses to recognize an MP4 file.
Windows Movie Maker is crap, by far the worst video editing software I’ve ever tried to use. I was trying to figure it out to teach a friend how to use it so he could do simple edits himself, and it really is bad. That said, if all you need to really do is clip the beginning and the end, and don’t really want to spend anymore money, it should do the trick. Try converting the video clip from the MP4 to another format, and you should be able to get it into WMM. Download the free MPEG Streamclip to convert.
If you are willing to spend some money, maybe try Adobe Premiere Elements? You can find it for about $60. I haven’t used it, but I have used its bigger brother, Adobe Premiere. I prefer Final Cut Pro, but recent versions of Premiere aren’t bad, and it looks like the Elements version is getting okay reviews.
Another thought - again, if all you need to do is clip the beginning and end and you’re not making any internal edits… on the Mac, you can actually do that right in Quicktime Player with the “Trim” command. I can’t say for certain whether that works on the Windows version the same way, but certainly worth taking a look at.
If you just want to trim video, Virtualdub is pretty good. You can use “direct stream copy” which doesn’t process the video, so it’s much faster. If you want to do more complicated things like transitions, I don’t know if it can handle that.
I wonder why Microsoft even bothered to make WMM.
A few things:
First, RickJay, which version of Windows Movie Maker are you using? The latest version, called Windows Live Movie Maker, recognizes quite a lot of MP4 files, but unfortunately not all of them.
Second, re AaronX’s suggestion of VirtualDub. I haven’t used it for a while, but last time i did, it would not open MP4 files. The only way to get an MP4 file into VirtualDub was to feed it through a frame server like AviSynth. It’s not that hard to do, but requires another installation and might be a bit more than you want to do if you’re not used to the software.
RickJay, if Windows Live Movie Maker doesn’t work for you, and if you truly do just want to crop a couple of minutes of the front and back, with no internal editing, Handbrake will let you do that quite easily. It’s free software, it reads almost all MP4 files, and it will output to MP4 or MKV.
All you need to do is work out where your start and end points are (in seconds), and then use the relevant drop-down menu to select Seconds as your selection unit.
For example, if you have a 7-minute video, and want to lose the first 2 minutes and the last 2 minutes, you select:
Seconds 120 through 300
This will chop off the first 120 seconds, encode the section from 120 to 300 seconds, then chop off the rest. I’ve done it a bunch of times, and it’s a very simple procedure.
If you want any help selecting your video output settings, check out the Handbrake user guide, or you can ask back here and i’ll be happy to tell you what’s worked best for me.
If all he’s doing is trimming off space, he might as well take the two seconds to learn to write a simple AviSynth script that cuts off the first and last couple minutes of the video. He still has to put it into a program to render it (I think), but it would lessen the overall workload considerably.
I guess, but it seems to me that Handbrake would be just as quick, and has the added advantage of using a far more modern codec (H264) that will provide better quality video output at higher compression rates (smaller file sizes) than a DivX or XVid AVI file.
Since the OP makes reference to Movie Maker, I presume he’s a Windows user. Sony makes a product called “Vegas Movie Studio” which is pretty robust, and the basic version costs about $40. There aren’t a lot of other good low end options for windows.
If the OP shot his video with an iPhone, you can get the iMovie app for $4, and that’s more than adequate for what he wants to do.
I use VirtualDubMod (I forget why I went from VDub to VDubMod I’ve been using it for so long). It’s great for cutting a few minutes here and there, and you can even cut and paste if you want things in a different order. I then use DivX or XVid for the encoding (haven’t noticed any loss of quality). I convert everything to MPEG-2 before loading it into VDubMod (it seems to handle .mpg best). There are a ton of free converters and VDubMod is free also. Visit videohelp.com for help or suggestions on how to find and use the s/w.
I used Vegas for a year or so, and got very good results with a good set of functionality. However, I ditched it after the first time I tried to make a slide show out of a series of stills. The render time was something like 20-30 minutes for each minute of video time, and when the file started to get big (20 minutes of video) the rendering process would repeatedly and reproducibly crash. I never had this problem with garden variety video, however.
If you’re on Youtube, another possibility is to upload it and edit it online. The Youtube editor is a little bit quirky but it seems to work ok.
This is factually correct.
We ran into lots of frustrating problems (before purchasing Adobe Elements) - the worst being corrupted files. (How do you write software so poorly as to end up with “corrupted files”? In my entire career I’ve never written software that ended up with a problem like that.)
I will never use this software again.
Sony Vegas is probably your best option, assuming “cheap” means “under $1000”.
You could try the $40 “Movie Studio HD” version, but I’d recommend moving up a notch to the $95 “Movie Studio HD Platinum”, which offers a lot more options when it comes to mixing audio tracks, and can author DVDs (although I never use that feature personally…)
And yes, it recognizes MP4 files without requiring Quicktime.
Looking for the same recently, I found this:
My daughter handed me a video camera at 9pm and told me she had to have this video project done for class the next day. 
I was able to do some neat things - Star Wipe! - and freeze the last frame and fade out.
It’s easy, and it’s free. Give it a try!
The free version of RealPlayer comes with a nice “cutting” software which lets you watch the video a select where to snip on both ends.
BTW, it also has the best converter tool.
Videopad Video Editor is a very good (and reasonably priced) video editor.
You can cut, splice, add, remove and edit soundtracks, freeze frames, fade in/out, and add special effects.
There is a 30 day trial period to try it out.
You can get iMovie and the iPad to go with it for less than some of the editing packages mentioned here.
Yeah, right.
Let’s have a look, shall we, at the “editing packages mentioned here”?
Windows Movie Maker - free
Virtualdub - free
Handbrake - free
Sony Vegas Movie Studio - $44
VirtualDubMod - free
YouTube - free
Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum - $95
VideoPad Video Editor - $50
RealPlayer - free
I’ll tell you what: how about i send you a check for $95, and you send me your iPad? Does that sound like a bargain?
I merely said ‘some’ of the packages. But, sure, you can have my iPad for $95 right after I get my iPad 3, iMovie already installed.