Subject:Lossless media editing

Posted by: Edin1

Date:9/23/2004 9:21:34 PM

I have seen this feature available in both free and expensive software, but Sony doesn't think it is important enough. I am talking about editing MP3, Ogg and similar files without decoding and re-encoding again, thus losing quality.
I strongly urge Sony to consider this feature in their future updates and upgrades, as it is very convenient and professional feature to have!

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: musicvid10

Date:9/23/2004 9:41:41 PM

Can you give us some examples of "both free and expensive software" that doesn't decode and encode compressed files for editing?

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: Edin1

Date:9/23/2004 10:52:23 PM

Data Becker’s MP3 Editor, mp3Trim, MPEG Audio Scis-sors, Mayah EditPro, mp3DirectCut, vcut (command line tool for cutting ogg Vorbis files losslessly). There are few others, and I can get their names too, but I think I have proved my point.
Where is Sony with its professionality in all this?

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:9/24/2004 4:52:23 AM

Perhaps SONY considers it unprofessional to be editing compressed media.

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: Edin1

Date:9/24/2004 6:06:04 AM

Well, then they wouldn't allow you to open and edit any compressed media, now would they? The way they do it now is by decoding the compressed media, and creating temporary raw (WAV) files, working on those temporary files, and then re-encoding the media. Besides wasting time and space, and losing quality, it is also unprofessional.
I know that when you need to do more complex editing, and change bits accros the whole media file, you do need to work on its decompressed version, but when doing simple cutting and joining of media files, and changing only a part of a lossy compressed media file, doing this losslessly makes it significantly faster, and it keeps the original quality on the parts that haven't been changed.
Other companies and individuals have implemented this feature even with limited resources (and even providing their tools for free), and for Sony not to incorporate it in its products, it really makes you wonder if they are the leader in innovation.

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: drbam

Date:9/24/2004 7:00:05 AM

>>Other companies and individuals have implemented this feature even with limited resources (and even providing their tools for free), and for Sony not to incorporate it in its products, it really makes you wonder if they are the leader in innovation.<<

I'm not going to speculate on Sony's decision not to incorporate the feature you want. However, this certainly has been discussed here several times before and therefore reasonable to expect that it's been considered by Sony. I find it interesting that when someone doesn't find a feature they *personally* want (whether its viable to the wider professional market or not), Sony is accused of being out of touch with their market base, or as you do here, question whether "they are the leader in innovation" or voice some similar criticism. This is just an observation of something I've noticed on all of the Sony forums (and probably exists on others as well).

drbam

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: captn_spalding

Date:9/24/2004 11:14:58 AM

I haven't used any of the products you name, but are you sure they are not decompressing and recompressing under the covers? I do not profess to be and am not an expert on audio compression, but having designed and implemented general data compression schemes, I know that it would not be possible to edit the compressed data in those schemes without first decompressing it. But perhaps that is not true in audio compression.

...spalding

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: Edin1

Date:9/24/2004 1:06:36 PM

True, these editors do have to decompress data on the parts that need to be changed, and I am not claiming that they don't decompress and recompress where the file is being changed, but this feature is mainly used and useful for lossless cutting, spliting and joining of lossy media files, and in the case where you have a problematic part, so you just fix that little spot (i.e. it needs to be decompressed and then re-compressed), and the rest of the file remains unchanged.

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: Edin1

Date:9/24/2004 1:11:08 PM

Heh, if it weren't found in so many other products, I wouldn't be so critical of Sony. And Sony does deserve criticism sometimes (Search for noise problems with their VX2000 and PD150), while at other times we are harsh on them just to get them moving forward. Sony people know this, and I don't think that they will take my comments here as negative, but rather encouraging. Just like everyone, Sony has both the good and the bad stuff, and user feedback is needed to help improve and get the good side.

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: jorgensen

Date:9/28/2004 3:26:00 PM

Forget it!

I am not an mp3 export, so I can’t tell if, you can cut/paste into a compressed file without decompressing – but for sure, you will not be able to do any effect editing, as all plug-ins requires 32-bit floating pcm coding.

But one nice feature could be a mp3 artifact plug-in filter, like for e.g. jpeg pictures.

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: Sonic

Date:9/29/2004 7:39:20 AM

Actually, I recall an AES paper from a few years ago that outlined how to do some basic processing on compressed data.

But the more flexible approach would be to decompress only the frames you need for sample-modifying edits or non-frame cuts and then figure out how to recompress them while remaining under the bitrate. Tricky business unless you are Fraunhofer, et al. And it's still a recompress, just not of the entire file.

Let's extend this beyond mp3 to any lossy A/V format. While this might be a boon to the hobbyist or home user, one overriding professional concern with a tool like this is: Why bother editing a compressed deliverable when you have the original? Or, maybe better phrased: Why don't you have an uncompressed master?

There are perhaps some valid answers (though certainly not disk space or bandwidth anymore, at least for audio), but you can see the fair use vs. piracy arguments forming. Those are potential legal quandries that could easily make companies shy away from this.

That's not necessarily my opinion and I wouldn't presume to speak for Sony. I haven't really seen enough demand for such a feature to justify the effort. But it's something to think about.

J.

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: Snappy

Date:9/29/2004 5:35:11 PM

Word, Chienworks! My sentiments exactly!

Practically speaking, however -- considering we are living in the world where the media consuming public has NO fricking clue about this stuff and chances are that compressed formats are going to be the norm, not the exception, 5 years from now -- this does sound like a needed feature! =)

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: Edin1

Date:10/13/2004 12:02:58 AM

Here is one more tool, that actually works on MPEG-2; it's called VideoReDo!
Location: http://www.drdsystems.com/VideoReDo/?src=dvdrHelp1
I don't know why some people here can't see my reasons for requesting such a feature as lossless editing of lossy formats, but maybe they will think about it again when they need to edit a 3-hour MPEG-2 video, where only few seconds need to be fixed, or something added in between, which can be done losslessly on the rest of the file. And the time needed for such a correction would be measured in minutes, not hours!
This is definitely something that Sony Media Software needs to add to its products!

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: farss

Date:10/13/2004 1:56:04 AM

Edin,
I have no doubt of the need for these tools but I don't see why you think they should be in any of the current Sony toolset. As you've said they're already out there, many of them for free. Why should SF or Vegas be a Swiss army knife?
In my opinion they've already wasted a major part of the development effort that went into V5 of Vegas implementing features that are already found in other apps that do a far better job, lets not add more widgets to the product.
That's one argument, the other one is technical. At the moment you can drop pretty well anything audio or video onto the T/L. You can do this so long as the appropriate codec is installed, people have even got Vegas to edit things the engineers doubted would work.
However once you try editing compressed media in its native state this whole concept falls apart. To edit mpeg 1 layer 3 audio or mpeg - 2 TS or VR or PS video your code needs to understands its structure. If a new format comes along (and they're appearing pretty quickly these days) then you cannot deal with it in this scenario.

I'd hate to see them break the core functionality of the product line to implement a feature that as you've already admitted you can get elsewhere for free or close to it.

BTW if you want to edit mpeg-2, Wobble is pretty cheap.

Bob.

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: jorgensen

Date:10/13/2004 5:27:18 AM

I see your point.

But why not ask the other companies, to let you extract/insert the section in question, and then edit it SF or whatever.

I could think of using such a program.

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: Edin1

Date:10/13/2004 9:03:37 AM

I agree on some points with you, but I am mainly talking about small patches and fixes or cuts and joints on DVD MPEG-2, MP3, and Ogg. I am asking Sony to consider these features because they have such good quality and professional programs, which are also easy to use. Most of the people don't like having to go to another program to do simple lossless cutting, joining, and patching of lossy media format files, and having to pay more money after paying so much for what they already have, just to include maybe 5 to 10 features, while Sony's software contains hundreds.
Because Sony already has so many features, and you have to pay so much already (not that it isn't worth it), why pay additional 10-30% in money just to get additional 1% in features?

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: jorgensen

Date:10/14/2004 12:05:05 AM

I am sure Sony will never go that way, because it is to complicated to support all the different algoritms. You have to know the algoritm to reencode the editing, and espically for video it is a jungle. Some players may go bananas if different codecs are used in the same file.
For a company like Sony, it will be a disaster to include something that doesn't work 100%.

Subject:RE: Lossless media editing

Reply by: farss

Date:10/14/2004 6:39:51 AM

Jorgensen,
you've missed the point. Vegas can edit anything pretty well if the matching codec is installed. But that isn't a lossless process. The codec decodes and encodes, that's how Vegas or SF etc can work with the media.
To do a lossless edit you have to manipulate the native data. To do this just for mpeg-2 is a nightmare, there's many different flavours and the way you have to treat each one is different, and that's just mpeg-2, then there's mp3, mpeg-1, mpeg-4, H.264, WM9, WMA, PCA, ac3. Each one requires a huge amount of code to deal with in this scenario and it has to be done outside the existing structure of SF and Vegas.
By comparison, Wombble is about $50, TMPGEnc isn't much more and it does many things.
Personally I'd rather see Sony waste engineering hours on including a spell checker before they tackled this one and that'd take less time than what's been talked about here.

Bob.