How do I snip out a part of a larger .avi video

[teddyFBI]

I've got a 60-minute long, 349-MB .avi of me on one of the ESPN final table telecasts. Trouble is that I get all of 3 minutes of face time, so I want to somehow "clip" those 3 minutes of this very long (and large) video so that I can send it to friends. What kind of program would I need to do that?

I have Nero on my machine...can I use that? If not, is there freeware i can use?

[Meech]

http://www.virtualdub.org/

[teddyFBI]

Thanks for the link, but i downloaded that, and tried to use it, and thought that I had been successful, until I started the clip that I had made, and that's where things got wacky:
The original hour-long .avi file was only 350MB, but the 3-minute CLIP i created was a whopping 2.18-gigs! That, plus the audio was all screwed up. I must not have done it right, although the clip i made did start and end at the places I designated >> but why was it so HUGE?

Want to give me a quick stepbystep tutorial? All I did to create my file was use the "mark in" and "mark out" controls (the ones that look like bookends) to select where i wanted my clip to start/stop, and then clicked "save as..."

[teddyFBI]

bump

[erbbysam]

You didn't use a codec when you re-encoded the video. Uncompressed video is literally a bitmap image of every single frame, which is huge. Under the "video" menu, select "compression" and then "cinepax", "divx" or "Indeo" will do then try saving the video again, and it will use the compressor that you selected.

[Paul B.]

XviD for the win.

[_dave_]

[ QUOTE ]

The original hour-long .avi file was only 350MB, but the 3-minute CLIP i created was a whopping 2.18-gigs!

[/ QUOTE ]

After opening the original AVI in VirtualDub, make sure you check "Direct Stream Copy" in both the Video and Audio menus, then "Save Original Format AVI" from the File menu.

That should work.

dave.

[aflaba]

I looked FOREVER for an application to do this. I tried some applications freeware and trialware and to my surprise I found none good. I finally bought Solveig Multimedia splitter, www.solveigmm.com, and I'm really content with that application.

The biggest thing that bugged me with the like six other applications I tried was that they told me they would cut at let's say 06:23, but they didn't. They went to the closest keyframe and made a cut at like 06:26. Solveig was the only application I tried that showed you exactly where the closest keyframe is. I also found the application great in every other way *****

[EscapePlan9]

Windows Movie Maker works fine for this task too, and it's much simpler.

[Professionalpoker]

[ QUOTE ]
Windows Movie Maker works fine for this task too, and it's much simpler.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed - its free with Windows XP