CNET Editors' review
Making simple crop edits to videos of all formats shouldn't be tricky business, but most tools out there either do way too much or are so belabored with ads that who knows what evil lurks within their code.
Open-source on the GNU license, Avidemux is a breath of fresh air. Cropping a video is as simple as selecting the section you want to remove and then hitting the Delete key. Re-encoding a video is equally painless: select the output format from the drop-down list, save the file, and you're good to go. When choosing where to start and stop a crop, there's both incremental and multisecond advance and rewind tools, There's also a not insubstantial list of video and audio codecs that files can be converted to. Video formats include multiple codecs for FLV, MPEG, AVI, VCD, H.263/4, and others, while audio formats include MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, and one or two more.
The program also includes advanced options, including generic decoder and post-processing tools, user-defined filters, GlyphSet adjustments, and more features. Avidemux should appeal to users of all abilities who are looking for a quick way to edit down video files.
Publisher's Description
From Avidemux:
Avidemux is a video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities. The program was written from scratch by Mean, but code from other people and projects has been used as well. Patches, translations and even bug reports are always welcome.
What's new in this version: Version 2.5.6 added support for latest x264 core, restored AC3 and MP2 encoding, and improved crash reporting on Windows especially Win64.
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All versions:
2.9 starsout of 168 votes
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Current version:
2.2 starsout of 10 votes
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My rating:
Write review
Results 1-10 of 10
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"Mediocar--"
Version: Avidemux 2.5.6
Pros
Um........
Cons
Uh........
Summary
This program is mediocar
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"Fully-featured video editing tool for advanced users."
Version: Avidemux 2.5.6
Pros
Features easy to discover. Supports common codex types. Supports conversion, crop, resize, multiple a/v data streams, subtitles, filters and effects. Opensource extensible feature set. Compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux platforms. Small memory footprint.
Cons
No Online help. Requires in-depth knowledge of digital media formats, editing techniques, and filter-set parameters. Suffers from performance bottlenecks at both core element and plugin levels.
Summary
A fully featured, extensible digital video editor for the sophisticated user. The interface is easy enough to understand for quickstarts. Although a wiki (http://www.avidemux.org/admWiki/doku.php) provides in depth documentation, the platform and plugins will benefit from online documentation. One hopes this project will mature into a lean and mean 64-bit platform.
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"The brochure sounds nice, but won't function wo crashes"
Version: Avidemux 2.5.6
Pros
Looks user-friendly.
TBD overall, after it loads without crashing.Cons
Both versions (32-bit & 64-bit) are the same, and both hang, before start-up!
Summary
This product needs many more patches to operate at all on Windows... consider longer, more stable builds of this, before the next release.
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"Outstanding Performance"
Version: Avidemux 2.5.6
Pros
This is very well written application. It takes advantage of multi-threaded and very efficient. The number of format options and is extensive and basic video editting and conversion is very straight forward.
Cons
The documentation could be better and the more advance video editting functions may take a bit of exploration to figure out.
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"useless junk"
Version: Avidemux 2.5.6
Pros
irrelevant, considering the cons
Cons
Editing video doesn't ensure editing audio. I cut 30 seconds of video and the sound WASN'T CUT along with that. What a mess!
Also, the output file had just crackling sounds for audio.
One of the junkiest pieces of soft I've ever wasted my time on. -
"Okay but older ver still better"
Version: Avidemux 2.5.6
Pros
It contains most of the features applicable to basic editing. If you want to do green screen or other special work ionvolving several videos on more than one timeline it is not adequate.
Cons
I gave this new version only 3 stars, because I found this latest version froze a lot "shades of windows movie maker" but as someone posted, version 2.5.1 worked flawlessly for me.
GOOD NEWS Yes you can download previous versions on the sourceforge.net site at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/avidemux/files/avidemux/Summary
Overall it is a great FREE editor that will perform 90% of what most people need with an interface that one can learn quickly. I prefer to use it with a separate converter and joiner program to save time.
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"version 2.5.6"
Version: Avidemux 2.5.6
Pros
dont know, didnt get very far
Cons
version 2.5.1 working fine; upgraded to 2.5.6 and the program crashes every time i tried to edit one of my videos; downgraded back to 2.5.1 and it works again
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"did not work with h.264 files"
Version: Avidemux 2.5.6
Pros
was able to handle 3gp files
Cons
got the same problem as merkaba369 - sort of B frames error. there was audio stuttering.
could not figure out how to cut the files. the HELP menu was not helpful at all
will uninstall, and there's no built in uninstaller! -
"Problems with B Frames"
Version: Avidemux 2.5.6
Pros
When it works (or worked in older version), it was a great easy to use program.
Cons
Every file I open, mp4, avi, flv, I get the warning about using B Frames (don't know what that is) so Avidmux offers to import using a different format, but warns of lost data. Once you try to clip just the part you use, it either can't export (ie crashes) or exports and the audio is garbled.
Summary
Not happy with the new improved version, wish I could go back to the older model.
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"Won't work with most my file formats"
Version: Avidemux 2.5.6
Pros
When it works, it is pretty easy to use
Cons
Won't open most of my files. The ones I did get to load and edit, when I cut a section, the audio no longer lined up.
Summary
It won't work with any of my video files. To load my .mpg files, it tells me I'm required to index first. Then at the end of indexing, it gives me an error "can't determine aspect ratio". So when the video loads, it plays too fast. I got similar problems loading .flv files.
I was able to load .avi files, but when I cut out commercials, it left the last 5 seconds of sound from the last commercial, so the sound was off for the rest of the video. I did everything their help website said to do to keep the audio and video in sync, but nothing worked.
One other downside is there is no prompt to save your project before closing it. If you close the program or start a new project without saving your previous project manually, you will loose your work.
BOTTOM LINE: maybe there is someone out there that has the exact right type of file that will work with this program, but none of mine do. When (if) you can get the program to work, it is so easy to cut out commercials, even from the middle of a video file. If they would only get the program to work right with my file types, it would be a great program.
Results 1-10 of 10
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