README

DVBCUT README -- last edited 2012-07-26

This is a full QT4 port of dvbcut. The plan is to reimplement the original
interface using proper QT4 classes (not just QT3support) and then make
additional improvements. You can find the original QT3 version at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvbcut/

See the file "COPYING" for license issues. See the file "INSTALL" file for
installation instructions.

dvbcut is a Qt application which enables you to select certain parts of an
MPEG transport stream (as received on Digital Video Broadcasting, DVB) and
save these parts into a single MPEG output file. It follows a "keyhole
surgery" approach. Thus, the input video and audio data is mostly kept
unchanged, only very few frames at the beginning and/or end of the selected
range are recoded in order to obtain a valid MPEG file.

dvbcut needs to create index information on an MPEG file first. Therefore,
when loading an MPEG transport stream file, it also asks you for a filename
of an index file. If you choose an existing file, it is loaded and used as
index if suitable. (That means, that dvbcut performs some sanity checks on
the index itself and also checks if the index describes the chosen MPEG
file.) If you select a file which does not yet exist, dvbcut creates the
necessary index in place.

After opening the MPEG file, you can navigate through the video by means of
a linear and a log scale slider. While the first represents the whole video,
the latter enables you to precisely select frames close to the current frame.
At any place in the video, you can add START, STOP, CHAPTER and BOOKMARK
markers. Markers are shown in the list on the left. With the START and STOP
markers you determine what parts of the video you want to write to a new
file. dvbcut starts at the first START marker and proceeds until it
encounters a STOP marker. If there are more START markers after that STOP,
it will continue at the next START marker, and so on. Every START marker,
which follows a START with no STOP inbetween, is meaningless. So is a STOP
marker before the first START or after another STOP (with no START
inbetween).