Newbie merge/join question

[glone2dvd]

With the help of this forum I have been successful in uploading my MiniDV tapes to my PC (firewire) and then using AVStoDVD and ImgBurn to author and burn DVD's of all the baby footage for my wife for Christmas, I am most appreciative. Some of the tapes (shot with a Sony camcorder) have yielded multiple .AVI files with every pause and restart of the camcorder. What is the best way to merge these files into one continuous file? My output from AVStoDVD has created a VIDEO_TS folder containing VIDEO_TS.BUP, VIDEO_TS.IFO and VTS_xx_x VOB files. Is this best place to merge files or with original AVI files? What software is recommend?

[hello_hello]

Try opening an AVI with VirtualDubMod, then use the File/Append Segment menu to add each AVI you wish to join. From the Video menu, select Direct Stream Copy as the compression method and save that as a new AVI with the File/Save as menu.

If VirtualDub complains about not having a codec to decode the video or audio you should still be able to join the AVIs with it anyway, but VirtualDub won't be able to display the video.

Or you could open an AVI with MKVToolNix, use the append function to append the others, then the remux button to save them as a single MKV, which you can use as your AVStoDVD source.

They'd probably be the easiest methods, but if the video and audio durations aren't identical in each AVI, the output from AVStoDVD might have audio sync issues. If that happens, plan B will probably be a little more complicated, but try that first.

[JVRaines]

You want to merge the AVI files before you encode them for DVD. Easy to do with the Append function in VirtualDub. Make sure you have Audio and Video set to Direct Stream Copy before you save the merged AVI.

[johnmeyer]

Even easier: just put them on the timeline in your video editor. Given the kine of project your are doing, you definitely should be using some sort of editor so you can edit out gaps, bad footage, dull stuff, etc. You can also rearrange material to group stuff together, etc.

The multiple clips you get when the camera starts/stops is normal, and when put into a NLE (Non-Linear Editor, a.k.a., video editor) it will take care of joining them together. Then, when you are ready to create a DVD, you render the video to MPEG-2, the audio to AC-3 or PCM, and put the resulting files into a competent DVD authoring tool.

[videobruger]

You could use DVDStyler to merge your clips and do some simple cut editing. I made a video on how.

[glone2dvd]

Thanks for your suggestions. I used VirtualDub to append the files together and it worked fine. There is a small hitch when authoring the result file in AVStoDVD, I am getting error/warning messages "Errors found during Title 1 Audio Track 1 encoding. Audio filesize is too low (0 MB) Backup Audio encoding routine (FFmpeg Safe Mode) is starting..."

It then seems to run encoding in safe mode. This seems to work and I checked and burned the resulting VIDEO_TS files and they seem OK, they have audio and its in sync. Also seeing a bunch of CODECS Unknown and "AC3: No Preferred Filter set" in the CODECS REPORT on the log. Is this something fairly obvious? Should I have LAV filters downloaded, this is my first attempt at video processing so I am kind of picking my way through. Any suggestions to correct this? Thanks.

[glone2dvd]

I don't know if this log output would help.

[glone2dvd]

uploaded entire log

[glone2dvd]

Asked this in Capturing forum. Please remove this thread.

[glone2dvd]

Asked this in Video Conversion, please remove this thread.

[glone2dvd]

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