Maximum PC

I recently recorded a tv show marathon on my computer and need a way to spit the 1 avi file into the episodes and remove the commercials. What is the best, preferably free, program to do this?

What OS are you running?

Windows 7 Home Premium, 2Ghz Core2Duo, 4Gb RAM

Have you tried Windows Movie Maker?

Widows Movie Maker will make an excellent editing utility; however, the rendering process will take time… lots of time.

Since you have .avi files, try SolveigMM AVI Trimmer. It will render the ‘sections’ of your file in seconds rather than dozens of minutes.

Once you have all the ‘sections’ saved, import them all into Windows Movie Maker. The dozens of minutes won’t seem so bad as they’re rendered through WMM!

Windows Movie Maker in Win7 is very confusing to me. I spent 30 minutes scratching my head wondering what to do, then gave up. It may be oversimplifying the process and I'm over thinking it, but I couldn't cut and edit naturally.

I think it matters in what format you record in. If it's a DVD-DVR, you can record it in DVD fashion and simply load it into DVD Shrink multiple times. If it's AVI, you still use AVI editing software and load it several times. If there's 4 commercial breaks, you load the original and cut the break in 9 or 10 pieces. Piece one will be intro until break one, load two will be the original with the first selection cut off and picking up after the break, and so on. Windows Movie Maker seems like there's no transition choices to be made and it just feels cheap.

Editing can be S&M, or simple based on methods methods of editing. The software just fits our editing preferences or it's a mess. I still like TMPGenc, but maybe because I'm use to it. It's freeware, but will tag "TMPGenc" in the resulting video unless you pay up. I've been notified of opensource software that's becoming very exciting of late (thanks Mr. O'Connell!)...so give Blender a run while I experiment with it as well.

I prefer the previous version of Windows Movie Maker as well. (i.e. Vista and XP's)

There seems to be a few of the features removed and a few different things added. But not in a good way overall.

For example the older version allowed you to automatically make clips of videos that you import. Those clips usually are divided well enough that commercials were in their own clips so it made the editing job fairly quick.

Stay the F away from windows movie maker. WMV is the devils cum dumpster.

Use virtualdub to split up the avi. it's free and great at this. You don't even have to re-encode (lot less time, no loss in quality), just use direct stream copy. http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/