command line program to split large .AVI into smaller .AVI

[Paul William]

I'm trying to find some software, that can be executed from a command line, that will be able to split a large DV .AVI into several smaller DV .AVI files. As a bonus, the same software should be able to join many small .AVI files (encoded with DivX or Xvid) into a single larger .AVI file.

This requirement is part of a project to build a distributed (grid) video encoding system. My idea is that I would split a big file into many small files, send the files to a network of computers to be encoded using DivX or Xvid, then to re-join the files together from the individually encoded small files. Thus instead of using one computer to encode a large file, I will use multiple computers working in parallel to each encode a piece of the file, thereby saving time. This will only be useful, however, if the amount of time it takes to split and then later join the files is less time intensive than the time it takes to encode a large file.

Any file splitting/joining software that you can recomend that can be executed from a command line prompt would be appreciated. - Paul

[celtic_druid]

mencoder. You might also want to check out ELDER.