Hi another basic guide, a lot of people are still asking how they can split a "mpeg 1" file they have made, as it wont fit onto 1 CD-R. Again there are many programs for this, however this guide is about TMPGEnc which most people have. Although the subject says Mpeg 1, you may also be able to do the same with Mpeg 2, depending on having the correct filters installed.

Run TMPGEnc and select File > MPEG Tools

Select Merge&Cut (TAB)

From the "Type" drop down list select the type of stream, if you have made a Mpeg 1 VCD select "MPEG 1 Video CD" Next click the "Add" button.

You will now see a dialog box pup up for you to browse your hard drive and open your mpeg movie. Select the file you want to split and click open.

You will see the file in the window, click to highlight it, then click the edit button.

The movie preview windows is now displayed, with a slider bar which you can move to fast forward or rewind the frames

You can also use these buttons to Play and Stop the movie

These buttons are used to mark the { start and end } of the frames you want.

Drag the slider bar to the far right, drag it as far as it will go, then make a note of the "total playing time"

The above shows a total playing time of 2 hours 40 minuets and 21 seconds, you now need to split that number into 2 and move the slider bar to that location.
(1 hour 20 minuets and 10 seconds)

However in this example, as you can see, a split into 2 is very close for a 80 minuet CD-R and may not fit, so maybe you should get rid of those credits at the start or the beginning of the home movie first, before moving on to split the movie into 2. Assuming you can fit the 1 hour 20 minuets and 10 seconds onto one disk,

I will continue....
Move the slider bar to 1 hour 20 minuets (Roughly) then use the range selection and click the little up or down arrow to move the frames to 01:20:10 (Exactly half of the movie)



Click the } button to mark this as the end point, note when you do this the frame number will jump to the nearest GOP (See below), so don't worry about that, this is as close as you can get with TMPGEnc. Now that you have the first section of the movie highlighted, click OK This will return you to the main screen where you are now ready to start saving out part 1

In the Output box, type the location and the name of the file you wish to save, and click "Run" another dialog box will pop up showing the progress.

First the video stream

Then the audio stream

Then both streams are Multiplexed

As a rule, if the video is in excess of 4800 (4800/60 = 80) this means its over 80 minuets and may not fit on the CDR your using, people with "Over Burn" should have no problems. Most movies are 90 min and can easily be split into 2 X 45 min files.

Nero test---------------start

In this example I used Nero to burn the file, setting the overburn to 82 minuets, but setting the red marker to 81 minuets. Nero will then warn you about the size.

As you can see :) a standard 80 minuet disk shows the manufacturers specifications of 703 Mb (Maxell 80XL) this may be different with other CDR types. Although I have deliberately set this up to show you what could happen, most of the time it don't :)
Nero test---------------end

Having split the first half of the home movie, you will be returned to the main screen in TMPGEnc, ready to continue with the second half of the movie. Again click the edit button to return to the frame selection screen.

This time select the start as 01:20:10 clicking the { button to mark the start, then move to the last frame before clicking } to mark the end. You will now have the second half of the move marked ready to save. Some people mark the second half a few frames back, so when played, the first few frames are the same as the end of disk 1

Change the name in the output box to 2of2 and click run...
All done, you have now split the movie into 2 parts, each being roughly half the size of the original.

Merge
This function can also be used to join 2 movies together, you would simply click the add button twice to add each part of the movie, then type the output location and name of file, then click run.. This would join both parts together into one large file.

technical waffle, don't read unless you have to :)
If both half's were made by TMPGEnc, then joining them will present no problems. However there has been a few reports that when using this method a "Bleep" can be heard at the join.

TMPGEnc MPEG tools officially supports MPEG files which were encoded by TMPGEnc. If the MPEG file is encoded by some other software or captured from a capture card, there might be a gap between audio and video. Or, there might be dropped frames, which is made up when playback. If this is the case, MPEG tools does not make up such dropped frames, there will be gap. If a gap is constant at any point of the movie, it can be adjusted, however if the gap is gradually increasing, it is very difficult to fix.

At the cut in Mpeg tools, TMPGEnc uses Microsoft DirectShow for the preview and determines the positions to cut. Microsoft DirectShow cannot seek Mpeg files correctly if files were encoded in VBR, So start/end position to cut may not be accurate. The actual place to be cut may not be the one that is displayed in the window.

For Mpeg files that you made with TMPGEnc, you should not have the same problem.

These functions always deals with scenes by GOP "Group Of Picture", the standard MPEG files has about 15 frame in 1 GOP which is about 0.5 sec. If the start/end point you selected to cut is not close to the boundary of GOPs, the point will be automatically moved to the closest boundary of GOPs.