I do want to let you know that HEURIS has recently cut our prices to be
more in line with the market. We were too expensive. Our product line
now looks like this:
MPEG-1 CBR $500
MPEG-1 CBR and MPEG-2 CBR $1,500
MPEG-1 CBR, MPEG-2 CBR, and MPEG-2 VBR (for DVD) $2,500
My concern is that you have to accept one of several limitations when
you talk about editing MPEG. The first limitation is that editing a
standard MPEG stream will likely cause a video buffer overflow - which
will mean that the stream will be rendered illegal and cannot be played
back from that point on. You can get around in several ways. You can
lower your bit rate or inject blank frames, but this will impact
quality. You could also re-encode the clip from the point of the edit,
but that can be a hassle, especially when you are dealing with longer
clips. The third option is to do what is called an I-frame only encode.
This is to encode the sequence using only MPEG I-frames and not P-frames
and B-frames. The problem is that an I-frame only encode is basically
the same as a motion-JPEG encode. The point of MPEG is that is looks
for opportunities to compress both within (intraframe) and between
(interframe) frames. With an I-frame only encode you aren't using any
interframe compression, so your file won't be as small as a standard
MPEG file. A fully-encoded stream with I, P, and B frames could be 5 to
10 percent of the size of a comparable I-frame only or motion-JPEG
encode. The point of MPEG is that its files are smaller than
motion-JPEG files but are of comparable quality.
The bottom line is that MPEG editing is possible, but is very hard to
ensure that the file will be small, high-quality, legal, and not have to
be re-encoded.
Thanks,
Chris O'Leary
V.P. of Marketing
Heuris