This little guide will help you to cut your MPEG2 Videos and encode them into DivX format.

First you need to download three programs:

1. Virtual Dub MPEG2, this is a modified VirtualDub version that supports MPEG2 and can be downloaded here , the catch at this is that it desyncrosizes the video and audio track in long videos (over 1GB I think) because of that we need
2. ProjectX, a demuxing tool for MPEG2 Streams which can be downloaded here , demuxing is the process of splitting the audio and video data of the MPEG2 Stream and synchronize them with the ability to cut them, but you'll need to download the Java Runtime Environment to run it and that can be downloaded here . With ProjectX we produce a File that can be readed by VirtualDub. After that we need
3. K-Lite Codec Pack, this is a very good codec pack with many decoders and encoders, under others: the DivX Encoder. It can be downloaded here .

Now let's begin. First we need to install all these applications. You should install them in opposite order as given above which means first the codecs, then extract ProjectX and Virtual Dub MPEG2. The last two doesn't really need to be installed, they must only be extracted from their archives and then they're already usable.

For the codec pack you should install it just letting the settings on default.

Now we can really begin: First start ProjectX with clicking the ProjectX.jar, click accept in the loading window. After it has loaded you should add your MPEG2 Video. In the lower left should stand “ready...”, the fourth button above is a “+” with that you can add your video. Just browse to it in the opening dialog and press “Select”. After that you should see your video's first frame is the area where the blue text is, click on the text to let it disappear. Below that is a currently complete green bar, below that “I<” “<<<” “<<” “” “>>” “>>>” “>I” with these you can 'scroll' through your video.

What they do: goto beginning, long backward, small backward, 1 frame backward

1 frame forward, small forward, long forward, goto end

On the right to these you see a “+” and a “-” this is the heart in out cuttings. You'll only need the “+” and you should use it this way:

Scroll through your video until you hit the beginning, keep searching it until you switch with “” between the starting frame and the frame before. Go to the first frame and press the “+”, now search for the beginning of the first advertisement, when you found it proceed like before, search until you find the last frame before the advertisement begins and press again “+”.

Did you notice the green bar from before? now it should be mostly red with a green part. Now proceed like this until the end of the film. When you're sure that always selected the first frame frame after the beginning and the advertisements and the last frame before the advertisements and the thing after your film, then you can click “prepare >>” on the left in the field Process.

Now select under “Action” “to M2P” and click on the Play / Pause button with the typical “I> / II” on it. The processed video will land right where the source video is. After it's done start VirtualDub.exe

Click “File->Open video file...” and select the *.m2p file you made (has the same name as the sourcefile just with .m2p)

After it's loaded (and this can take a lot of minutes for a 4 GB file) click on “Video->Compression” Select DivX ® Codec and click on “Configure”. Select the “Home Theater Profile”, check in “Use presets...” and set the slider to 4. In “Rate control” set the mode to “1-pass” and the Bitrate to 1500 (I use this because you don't have much quality loss and enough quality for a DVD with 2-3 videos like this or for compression to a SVCD.) then click “OK” and again “OK”.

Now click on “Audio->Full processing mode” then “Audio->Compression”, select “AC-3 ACM Codec” and set it to 160 kbps and then click “OK”.

Now press play and take a close look if the video is really synchronized, if not you can correct this under “Audio->Interleaving” in the field “Audio skew correction”, just enter a positive value of milliseconds if the audio is to early and a negative value if the audio is to late. Then click “OK”

The video needs to be cropped and deinterlaced in case you don't like the black fields and the lines like I do. For that click “Video->Filters” and add a “null transform” and a “deinterlace” with “Blend fields together” (default). The null transform is needed for cropping because for some reason the encoding will fail if you use cropping on the deinterlace filter. Select the null transform in the list and click on the “Cropping”. Now you can drag the lines from the four sides until they cut of the black fields around the video. But keep in mind that DivX only works with a width multiple of 4 and a height multiple of 2. So 702*401 won't work but 700*400. If you're done click “OK” and take a look at the list of filters. It tells you the result of your cropping, if its width is multiple of 4 and height multiple of 2 you're done here, so just click “OK”. If not adjust it until you match the resolution.

Now press F7 or click “File->Save as AVI”, enter a desired filename and let the encoding start, this could take a few hours depending on your PC but if it's done you succesfully encoded a MPEG2 to DivX. Gratulations.