Merge MPEG's

[VikingCrown]

I am trying to find a small tool that will allow me to merge 2 sage recordings.

My local CW affiliate started airing both parts of some of The Office's double episodes, and I want to make the 1 file. Is there some easy tool to do this? Recordings are made by wither my HDHR or my Hauppauge 2250

~ Brian

[tmiranda]

VideoReDo will do this for you. It's not free but there is a trial period.

[VikingCrown]

sigh, unfortunately i already used up my trials for both versions of VideoReDo, actually that was going to be a follow up post, is there any free way to tweak the .edl files from comskip like you can with videoredo.

[wrems]

avidemux might be able to help you join your vids.

[Pirin]

Are you using Windows? If so, open a command prompt and change to the directory with both files. Type the following command: "copy /b TheOffice1.mpg+TheOffice2.mpg TheOfficeBoth.mpg"

I know this works for mpgs, but I am not sure about any other file format; i.e. m2ts, etc. Please note, that there are no spaces between the 2 source filenames and the plus sign. Also, I have no idea if you can have a space in the source filenames, so maybe rename them to something without a space first if they contain any spaces.

If you want to know what this command is doing, it is just copying the files, using the binary flag (/b), to a single destination, appending each one in the plus list. So, if you want to join 6 files, you would just put a plus sign between all 6 filenames with no spaces.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by Pirin

Are you using Windows? If so, open a command prompt and change to the directory with both files. Type the following command: "copy /b TheOffice1.mpg+TheOffice2.mpg TheOfficeBoth.mpg"

That doesn't mess up the mpg headers? If its still a valid mpeg in the end thats a pretty neat trick

[Pirin]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

That doesn't mess up the mpg headers? If its still a valid mpeg in the end thats a pretty neat trick

Actually, it doesn't touch the headers. So, there will be 2 headers in the file, one at the beginning and one in the middle. However, I have not had a problem playing them in any software package. Of course, this was several years ago, and I wasn't using SageTV at the time. My guess is that it will play just fine, but the total time of the recording may not show up correctly?

I hadn't really thought all that through when I posted; it was just a quick response before I logged off for the night. I'd be curious to see what VikingCrown's experience is if he tries this.

[VikingCrown]

I did try Pirin's method and it appears to have worked, but he is correct that the time is displaying incorrectly. I can't comment on the audio sync yet either as I am at work at the moment.

I did a little more testing and I have 3 files to try at home (I will report back tomorrow or later tonight with results)

1. Pirin's CMD line
2. avidemux per wrems
3. DVTool 0.61 (found on afterdawn)

If the files play correctly but display incorrect timelines, is there any way to fix that? Other than the quickstream fix in VideoReDo?

[Pirin]

There shouldn't be any audio sync issues in the destination file if there weren't any in the source files.

Unfortunately, I don't know of another quick and dirty method to fix the header. I did a quick search on Google, but the only possibility I saw was MPEG Header Corrector, but it hasn't been updated since 2007 (and I have never used it, so I don't know if it will actually works).

I am interested in your results. I hope one of the options works for you.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by Pirin

Unfortunately, I don't know of another quick and dirty method to fix the header.

my guess is videoredo's quick stream fix will fix the headers (not free though )

you might want to give tsmuxer a try too.... it looks likes that will join segments... you probably wont end up with a mpg file in the end though (ts or m2ts though) EDIT: on a try of tsmuxer looks like it can't read mpegs directly. EDIT2: Just kidding... )

[VikingCrown]

Test:
Merge 2 files (total size 7.36 GB and 1:04:36 in duration) into 1 mpg file.

Results:

1. Command line: Combining was fairly fast, probably less than 10 min. Whole video was there, however, no audio and the timeline incorrectly display the duration.

2. AVIDemux: Combining was fast here too, about 5-10 min total. Whole video was there, also no audio, incorrect timeline and in addition the file size was smaller than the 2 files combined (6.94 GB).

3. DVTool: Combining was real slow, took about 30 min. Whole video was there, also no audio, incorrect timeline.

I couldn't find any free programs comparable to videoredo's quickstream fix, closest i found was womble (but its only a free trial). So I ended up having to purchase VideoReDo Plus anyway. I ran each of the files above through the quickstream fix, and voilà the Command Line and the DVTool versions had correct audio and correct timelines however the avidemux version failed. The error said something about elementary streams (probably just user error in the combining).

I did note that the file sizes on the combined files after running the quick stream fix were smaller than they before running them through (going from 7.36 GB to 7.20 GB)

I'll probably do 1 more test and see if i can combine them both with VideoReDo now that i have a licensed copy.

~ Brian

[wrems]

What if you use DVDFlick? Don't create the menu with it. It would play just fine. I believe the timeline would be for each segment rather than concatenated though... You might want to try. It's a descent program overall. Easy too.

[VikingCrown]

Thanks Wrems, i'll give that a shot on the next batch of episodes I want to join. I'll also try the VideoReDo join method and see how that works and I'll report back here.

[dgeezer]

Now that you own Videoredo, don't forget that you can set comskip to produce vprj files. You may as well save the combined files without any commercials. I used to do this with all the shows that I recorded for my daughter. Of course, saving a gb or two used to mean a lot more than it does now with hdd space being so cheap.

[Spectrum]

Too late since you've spent the money on VRD (not that it's not worth it mind you) TMPGenc has a free version that will cut/join mpegs. To use the cutter/joiner just cancel the popup box that comes up by default then click on File->mpeg tools->merge & cut