Video editing with Samsung HMX-H100

I recently bought myself a full HD Samsung videocamera. The model name is HMX-H100. Similar models include H104, H105 and H106, with the only difference being the amount of on-board memory.

One of the reasons I chose this camera is that is saves in a standard MP4 H264 format instead of the proprietary AVCHD container. However, it seems like none of the major programs can edit the files. And the included Samsung NLE software is useless since it crashes once you load more then a few clips.

What I want is very simple:

• Combine all video clips to 1 file without re-encoding (in 1 step, please)
• Trim the begin and end of this file and save without transcoding
• Save a second copy encoded with a lower bitrate in H264/MP4 for Youtube upload

After a long search, I finally found the tools to achieve this in an easy way with open source software. I list them here for you.

MP4cam2AVI
 This program allows you to put the existing H264 stream that sits inside a MP4 container in an AVI container. First you have to check the "expert" option and then you can choose "direct stream copy", allowing you to save to AVI without re-encoding. I tend to direct stream copy the video but to re-encode the audio to "lame high quality". The reason is that the audio codec used by Samsung causes problems for Windows DirectShow programs (like Media Player) when wrapped inside an AVI.
If you have multiple clips (the Samsung HMX-H105 savesevery take in it's own file) you can choose the "convert & join" option to output everything as 1 AVI file.

Virtualdub
A long-time favorite of mine. I didn't use it for a long time, but it comes in very handy to trim of the start and end of the AVI clip. Remember to check "direct stream copy" in the "video" and "audio" menu. Then just do "set selection start", "set selection end" and "crop to selection". Use "save as" to save the cropped AVI without recoding.

MPEG streamclip
To transcode the file to a lower bitrate MP4, I use MPEG streamclip. This very simple program (just 1 file) does the job without hassle.
On most occasions you can also open up the MP4 directly from the HMX camera (skipping the MP4cam2AVI and VirtualDub steps), trim it in MPEG streamclip and save it again without recoding.
I have abandonned this method in my workflow for 2 reasons:

• some of the clips of the Samsung HMX are not readable by MPEG streamclip (noticeably when the camera overflows a long recording after 1.8GB)
• most of the time I want to combine a lot of short takes into 1 long file, something only the MP4cam2AVI can do for me.

What puzzles me is that Samsung does not take the time to find out how their camera's can work with simple open source software like the programs mentioned above. Instead they devote their budget to a crappy piece of software which crashes so often that it is impossible to use.

If you benefit from my findings above, leave a short note in the comments.