Am I hosed or what?

[bluevine]

My capture software (pinnacle studio 7) insists on splitting my capture files into 2 GIG segments. I believe that has to do with my OS (Win Me). I tried converting the segments into MPEG2 and then joining using TMPGEnc but I've had consistent audio/video sync problems on the joined file. So....someone on this board suggested I combine the captured AVI files into one big file using VirtualDub before converting to MPEG2. So I tried that. Unfortunately, when I use File>Append AVI segment and then try to save as an AVI file (using Direct Stream), it craps out as soon as the combined file exceeds 4 Gig. The exact error I get in VDub is "AVI Output: The parameter is incorrect".
I'm a newbie here but at this point I'm at a stopping point until I can get around this problem. A 4 Gig AVI file is roughly 30 mintues or so. Am I hosed to only captures of 30 minutes or less????
I've tried using VCD Easy to play file sequentialy to get around this but it always pauses between tracks even when the pause is set to zero seconds so I can't go that route.
Sorry for the long post but I guess I'm in Video Editing Hell - as I guess everyone here has been at one point or another - and could really use some help.
Merci
Danke
Thanks

[snowmoon]

Win 9x/Me has a hard limit of 4gb on any file. That you can't get around.

What you CAN do is combine the files in VDub and FRAMESERVER them to Tmpgenc. Check the conversion guides and the forum for information on frameserving. Frameserving does not require that you save the while files back to disk, just an informational file that allows another program to "read" a psuedo file that is actually the VDub timeline.

[bluevine]

Well whaddya know. It worked. For the first time I've got one interrupted hour of good video without problems.
Thanks snowmoon!!