stuck for a program to join mpg's without reencoding

[orbspider]

I'm a Linux Ubuntu user. I'm looking for a program to join mpg's just by joining them up. I used to have HD Writer AE 2.0 with Windows, which, although very mouse clicky, could cut/join quite easily.

Avidemux: appending is tedious, plus u can't see the start/end of each appended clip. Although its output is so clean and fast.
Kdenlive: really nice program but 'rendering' takes a good hour for 10min of video. unless there's a way?
Openshot and Kino also take their time.

cat command
cat *.mpg > output.mpg
works but leaves a slight pause at the end of each clip in the output, when many clips are joined

mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -idx -o output.mpg *.mpg
also works a breeze, but there's some large blocky pixelation (very fast) at the joins now - which carries through to a VOB.

also mencoder gives a warning that its creating an avi file.

anyone know a solution, or is it only the paid programs that can help?
I haven't tried Cinerella yet, can it join without encoding?

[orbspider]

if i select multiple mpg's and open with Avidemux, multiple windows will open and none of them have all the files appended, just 4 or 5 out of total.

[El Heggunte]

Not sure if this will work, but...

first, demux all the .MPGs to .M2Vs

second, concatenate the elementary streams

third, wrap the result through mplex

[chowmein]

if i select multiple mpg's and open with Avidemux, multiple windows will open and none of them have all the files appended, just 4 or 5 out of total.

Try opening the 1st file, then open successive files one at a time with File/Append?

Maybe try GopChop?

[orbspider]

File/append?? do you think I don't know that? Wow! every time I need to join 20 or 30 files...

[usually_quiet]

File/append?? do you think I don't know that? Wow! Yea let's do that every time I need to join 20 or 30 files... what a lovely way to pass the time with my mouse!

Does any one around here really do video editing/film making or am i in the wrong place??

Most certainly there are members of this forum who do video editing/film making. However they mostly use Windows or OSX. The selection of available tools for Linux is comparatively small. VideoHelp's Linux tools list: https://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/linux-video-tools

[poisondeathray]

If they are sequentially numbered avidemux will give you the option to auto append

But then you would have to spend some "lovely time" renaming them

You can try mpgjoin or mpgtx
http://linux.die.net/man/1/mpgjoin
http://mpgtx.sourceforge.net/

[M Bruner]

I just had some what of the same issue. Turns out f I had just wrote the AviSynth script, opened it in AviDemux's AVS Proxy GUI, when the GUI opened up the script in AviDemux, I could have saved all the files to a single video. The "+" operator in the AviSynth script would appened all the files for me. Of course, if you're still waiting for an answer to avoid having to append twenty files, I wonder how many files you could have appended by now?

[poisondeathray]

I just had some what of the same issue. Turns out f I had just wrote the AviSynth script, opened it in AviDemux's AVS Proxy GUI, when the GUI opened up the script in AviDemux, I could have saved all the files to a single video. The "+" operator in the AviSynth script would appened all the files for me. Of course, if you're still waiting for an answer to avoid having to append twenty files, I wonder how many files you could have appended by now?

The problem with avisynth is that you will have to re-encode; he wanted to join without re-encoding. He'd probably have to run wine to run avisynth too

[chowmein]

File/append?? do you think I don't know that? Wow! every time I need to join 20 or 30 files...

That's not what you said before, smart-arse :

if i select multiple mpg's and open with Avidemux, multiple windows will open and none of them have all the files appended, just 4 or 5 out of total.

[Lord Thoron]

chowmein

I took the time to join this group just to thank you for your answer.
I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how to get the system to append some newly edited mpegs for me.
In truth after reading your comment I felt like an idiot for not thinking to look under the file tab, but then thats why the world has people like you, to point out those simple things a new user might not have thought about.

Coodos and thank you

[orbspider]

Actually now I know better, after using Avidemux to cut up and sew together mpeg2 files -it doesn't do a good job with it because of the fact that mpeg2 is a finished video format and is not best for use in editing.

now i cut my mpeg2 video in Kdenlive and re-encode, if i have to, but editing from original video or DV would keep the quality up. Could also use Avidemux but need to re-encode to something else not just copy the video if starting with mpeg2. but seeing i need to re-encode i can use Kdenlive because its easy to open all the clips i want to edit and join up. It also produces some top Q video and its good if you have Linux OS.

[orbspider]

I said that "äppending is tedious"