Quick Question re: Joining mpgs

[boing]

Best freeware to do this without re-encoding?

[redwudz]

Try TMPGEnc. It's freeware for that. 'File>MPEG Tools>Merge & Cut'.

Another you can try is CombiMovie.

[oldfart13]

So long as the mpegs aren't different bitrates and frame sizes....hopefully that isn't what you are trying to do....

[JohnnyMalaria]

If you truly want to just join them together (no editing or trimming etc), you can use "copy" command (for Windows):

e.g., if you have three files - 1.mpg, 2.mpg and 3.mpg and want to create a single file called joined.mpg, then use the following at the command line prompt:

copy 1.mpg+2.mpg+3.mpg /b joined.mpg

[mats.hogberg]

if you have three files - 1.mpg, 2.mpg and 3.mpg and want to create a single file called joined.mpg,

...but then the resulting joined.mpg would be messed up, as mpg isn't headerless.
About as clever as joining 3 Word documents by the same method.
Avoid.

/Mats

[JohnnyMalaria]

Mats - are you sure?

I've done this successfully and there was a thread about this a while back.

Other people have reported the same trick, too:

http://forum.digital-digest.com/archive/index.php/t-1996.html
http://www.newdaystudios.com/faq.php#1

[mats.hogberg]

I won't argue that it may play, but as mpg isn't headerless (It's supposed to have info in the header, that describes the mpg) you'll get headers in the file, where headers aren't supposed to be found.
Depending on playback device/app, this may or may not work.
One thing I'm sure of, is that you'll end up with a non conforming mpg file.

/Mats

[JohnnyMalaria]

OK - thanks.

I've always understood MPEG streams to be headerless which is why you can cut them into separate streams and each stream will still play.

[boing]

Try TMPGEnc. It's freeware for that. 'File>MPEG Tools>Merge & Cut'.

Another you can try is CombiMovie.

Ah but isnt TPMGEnc mpeg1 only?

CombiMovie looks like what I need, cheers

[redwudz]

TMPGEnc is freeware for encoding MPEG-1, but the demux/join/cut works with MPEG-2 also.

I've also used this basic joining program that works for any binary file but never tried it for MPEGs. FileMerger: http://home.planet.nl/~doesw008/filemerger.html

[Alex_ander]

TMPGEncPlus is not good at joining MPEG2 (especially VBR).
I'd try another tool if it's important to do it free. DGIndex (not specially designed for this purpose) has 'save project and demux video' option, it will join the loaded files (by default in alphabetic order) and demux audio/video streams at this. Then TMPGEnc can be used to mux the streams back (if needed).