VideoReDo

I used to have an app that came with a Hauppage capture card called something like MPEG Razer (might have remembered that wrongly) which was ideal for chopping out ad breaks from TV shows captured on the PC. The application was keyed to the card and so once I upgraded to a DVB capture card (see here) I couldn't use it - it was such a good idea - letting you chop the MPEG stream only at I-frames, thus avoiding breaking the GOP structure and meaning you could re-save the cut very fast and no loss of quality from decompressing / re-compressing. Anyhow - I recently discovered VideoReDo which is superb. As well as super-fast MPEG editing it has a really good audio-sync tool which allows you to slip sync as the clip plays. The thumbnail and waveform display is very helpful for that and the real killer feature is that it can automatically detect ad breaks and mark them for removal (subject to your approval). If you really want to frame-accurately cut the GOP it only re-compresses the sequence back to the I-frames either side of the cut. Very clever. It also has tools for fixing non-compliant streams.

Guess what show I was cutting when I grabbed that screenshot!