Best Way to Join AVI Files Before Encoding to MPEG?

[alibrian1]

I'm a bit confused with joining avi files together. I have a few films from the net but unfortunately they are in two parts. I have tried to join them a few different ways but I am looking for some software reccomendations and a few tips if anyone has some.

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Thanks

[Daagar]

There is a post on vcdhelp in the DVD ripping forum about this... I believe the following turned out to be the recommended way to go about it:

1. Open up the first .avi in VirtualDub.

2. Save the audio in uncompressed format (File->Save WAV after turning on Audio->Full processing mode)

3. Set Audio->No Audio, and set Video->Direct Stream Copy and save the .avi (this will save the video without audio).

4. Repeat steps 1-3 for the second .avi.

5. For each .avi, mux the no-sound video with the uncompressed audio. (Not sure which tool does the mux here... I think TMPGEnc can do it)

6. Now, load the first remuxed .avi in VirtualDub, then use File->Append AVI to attach the second. Then save out the resulting full avi.

Remember, this will take a huge amount of disk space! Two 700meg DivX files will turn into two ~600meg DivX files + two ~900meg .wav files, and then that amount of space again for the remuxed file (3GB .avi file). Phew! So 1.4GB + 3GB + 3GB = 7.4GB overall. Obviously, you can delete some of this once you're done, but you probably don't want to do that until you know everything works

They did mention that after doing this, if you play the .avi and skip around within it, you might see a/v sync issues. However, after encoding and burning to vcd/svcd, the sync issues seems to disappear. So don't panic if things are out of sync after the combine process.

[alibrian1]

Thanx Daagar, I will give it a go and see what happens.

[alibrian1]

Join

Open the first videoclip, then select File->Append Video Segment to add other videoclips.
Select BOTH under Audio and Video Direct Stream Copy.
Lasthit File->Save AVI and save the new joined movieclip.

Cut

Open the video
Select BOTH under Audio and Video Direct Stream Copy.
Select the first part by:
1. Drag the bar to the start
2. Select Start
3. Drag the bar to the end
4. Select End
Last save the the new clip with File->Save as AVI
Select the other part and save it.

This is the guide that I followed, which works great to a point. Only , half the audio is missing from the second half of the film. I have tried this with three different films and have the same problem. If anyone can help, please do.

[marko]

If the AVI files have identical formats (frame height ,width - same compression codec and identical codec settings- also same audio format)
then they can be joined using append in VirtualDub(FREE) using direct stream copy on both audio and video streams.

(divX 5.x files might be an exception )

Files of differing formats need to be re-formatted to identical then joined.

Alternatives are assemble differing format files in Adobe Premier and export the timeline as AVI or whatever