Cannot append, files use different compression

[PirateBill]

Okay, So my buddy has a bunch of avi clips from his camera. I want to use a bunch of them with other clips and make one movie. I know I could probably open all of the files and redo the settings to make them the same, but since the majority of the clips I want to use are from his camera, I want to save time. His camera encodes in xvid I believe when he saves them, is there anyway to find out what those settings are and reproduce them on the 2 clips I have that arnt using that compression? If I right click one of his files, the Image settings are 640x480 (which my clips are as well) and the video settings are 30 FPS, the data rate is 2749 kbps and the sample size is 24 bit. I used that 2749 as the target kbyte rate on single and multi pass xvid compression and it still said the compession is different. Will I have to redo all of his clips as well? Thanks for reading

[poisondeathray]

You can use gspot and mediainfo(view=>text) for more information. The audio specs have to match as well for appending

What is your final format goal for your "movie"? Just to append them? If you are re-encoding it to DVD or something else for example, there is not much point in matching the specs to re-encode then to append, you could do it all in avisynth in 1 step and encode to your final format goal

[PirateBill]

I'm planning on adding some fades and crap to clips and adding some music to play in the background, and just remove his audio completely since its all noise anyways. I've got avisynth but I haven't played with it yet. I'll check out those programs though and see if I can get this going. Thanks for the quick response!

[poisondeathray]

avisynth isn't easy to use, it's based on scripting and frameserving and the learning curve is steep

If you just wanted to join the clips, add some effects, some fades, and replace audio , add music, you could do that easily in a video editor e.g. sony vegas, premiere pro

You haven't answered what your final format goal was? ie. what are you using to play the final product ? This limits what you can do and the ways you can do it.

[PirateBill]

Just a standard avi file for the computer, not burning for use in DVD or anything.