Video Surgeon

When we catch a glimpse of something in a video, we immediately hit the Pause button, so we can have a closer look. A video editing program can be quite useful in this situation, but its price is not justified if you only need to analyze some footage. Video Surgeon was built specifically for video motion analysis. It doesn't enhance pixelated images like in CSI, but it allows you to zoom in on a specific spot, reduce the playback speed, loop one or more video segments and much more.

Video Surgeon is available for Windows and Mac OS X platforms. The software's trial version is fully functional, but it can be used for only a few hours. It requires WinPcap 4.1.3 and MS Visual C++ 2010. If you don't have them on your computer, the setup wizard will install them for you.

In terms of appearance, Video Surgeon looks and feels like a simplified version of other video editors. Besides a video player, the user interface displays a loaded file's video and audio channels in a timeline, as well as a series of tools for modifying the playback speed, the audio pitch, looping a video segment and more. You can change the temp and audio pitch by dragging two sliders left or right or by clicking a few buttons to set them to predefined values.

Zooming in on the video can be done through another slider and you can pan in any direction on the image by clicking and dragging with the right mouse button. Alternatively, you can draw a rectangle directly on the video player, to focus on a specific spot. Video Surgeon also allows you to place markers in the video's timeline, which can serve various purposes, from remembering a certain point to selecting a segment so you can play it on a loop. You can mark and loop more than one segment and it is also possible to copy, cut, paste or delete them, change their volume or silence the segments.

Additional tools can be found above the video player. The software allows you to import videos in various formats or rip them from DVDs. Furthermore, you can choose to export the entire video or selected segments in AVI, MPG, MP4, MOV or FLV.