Creating/playing a seamless final video from a collection of mp4 files

[karenvc]

Hello

I am new to video editing and I am creating a compilation video for my husband's special birthday as a surprise (collection of favourite clips/family stuff etc). I have been using Shotcut and find it a very useful program to do this.

My query is to do with the final combined video. Currently it is split into individual files to stop the timeline getting too long and unmanageable. I will probably end up with a dozen or so mp4 files. I have tried playing them on the tv from a usb stick. They run fine and in sequence but between each video it pauses to load (with the tv logo) and the play bar pops up again which ruins the continuity.

I would like to try and run them like a film - no pauses etc. I am thinking of of some possibilities as below but would welcome any comments/advice or other ways to achieve this. I know, of course, I can try the items below but I am really short on time so would appreciate a heads up as to what may or may not work.

Option 1:

I can't combine the whole thing on a single timeline in Shotcut as with all their elements and layers it would be too unmanageable. However, I could import back in all the finished mp4 files into Shotcut, which would be manageable. However, would the fact I have already exported them once as mp4 and will have to do this once again for the combined version degrade the quality. Perhaps another file type may be better if so?

Option 2:

Is there a way to create a 'title' page in Shotcut (a bit like you get on dvd) that says 'Play Movie' and then it can somehow load the mp4 files as a playlist - but I am not sure if this would prevent the tv still having the individual load issue?

Option 3:

Is there any other software (free) out there that could do what I am trying to achieve as in Option 2. In summary, create a title page than will run all mp4s in sequence without the loading pausing inbetween.

Option 4:

I don't know if burning to a dvd would get around this issue however, my files don't fit on a standard dvd so I would need to buy some dual layer dvds. But then it's nuisance with wasting disks if you spot errors and have to re-burn.

Any advice very much appreciated.

I also have Mini-tool movie maker and VLC on my laptop - I don't know if these may help.

Many thanks
Karen

[Buel]

Hi, do you have Windows 10? I use the inbuilt Video Editor and it is surprisingly easy to use for what you ask. You can add 'cards' (a slide with text on) whenever you want, too.

[ProWo]

You could try the mp4 joiner https://www.mp4joiner.org/en/

[karenvc]

Thank for your two replies. Either of which looks like they will achieve what I need!

[abolibibelot]

@ Karen
If for some reason MP4Joiner doesn't work (haven't tried it), it could be done with MKVToolNix. Extract the downloaded archive, open mkvtoolnix-gui.exe, drag and drop each clip in sequential order, when prompted select “Append to an existing source file”, when all clips are loaded choose a name and location for the output file, then click on “Start multiplexing”. The process is very quick, no reencoding is involved therefore there's no quality loss. Most recent standalone players (that includes so-called “smart” TVs) can read video files in either MP4 or MKV container (containing typically H.264 video and AAC audio), some can have trouble with one or the other, so it's good to know how to generate both.

There could be audio/video synchronization issues, be sure to check the whole combined file (either the MP4 obtained with MP4Joiner or the MKV obtained with MKVToolNix). In such a situation, years ago, when trying to join three or four segments of a broadcast recording and most common tools failed to produce a flawlessly synchronized output, I've had success with a ffmpeg script which first converted each segment to the TS (= “transport stream”) container, then appended the TS segments, then converted the combined TS to MP4 (all those steps being lossless). The script was :

ffmpeg -i "input1.mp4" -c copy -bsf h264_mp4toannexb temp1.ts
ffmpeg -i "input2.mp4" -c copy -bsf h264_mp4toannexb temp2.ts
ffmpeg -i "input3.mp4" -c copy -bsf h264_mp4toannexb temp3.ts
ffmpeg -i "input4.mp4" -c copy -bsf h264_mp4toannexb temp4.ts
ffmpeg -i "concat:temp1.ts|temp2.ts|temp3.ts|temp4.ts" -c copy -absf aac_adtstoasc "output.mp4"

(I'm not sure what the “-bsf” and “-absf” options actually did, if they were required, and if they would still work with a recent version of ffmpeg.)
But that was in 2013, common tools for such video conversion tasks have been updated many times since then, and are probably much better at dealing with such issues, so let's say that it's for completeness' sake.

I don't know if burning to a dvd would get around this issue however, my files don't fit on a standard dvd so I would need to buy some dual layer dvds. But then it's nuisance with wasting disks if you spot errors and have to re-burn.

If burning the files as-is, as MP4 files, it certainly won't play better as reading from optical discs is inherently way slower than from Flash memory (USB sticks, memory cards). Here if it's slow it's because the initial loading of each file is slow, because or hardware limitations or because the embedded software is a bit sluggish. One thing that may improve the loading speed somewhat would be to specify that the MP4 index should be at the beginning of the file rather than the end (both are possible for MP4 files), but that wouldn't remove the logo display / playback bars awkwardness, so combining all clips into a single file would be preferable anyway.
If “authoring” a standard video DVD, it may play more smoothly from one clip to the next, but, since I suppose that those clips were edited with a resolution that's typical these days, 1280x720 or 1920x1080, converting that to standard DVD would mean reducing the resolution to 720x576 and re-encoding to the antiquated / inefficient MPEG2 format, it would definitely not look as good, especially on a large flat screen.



@ Buel

Hi, do you have Windows 10? I use the inbuilt Video Editor and it is surprisingly easy to use for what you ask. You can add 'cards' (a slide with text on) whenever you want, too.

Don't know about that, but even if it's as good and easy as described, that would mean starting all over again (while the editing work seems mostly finished) and having to learn a very different interface (key words : “I am really short on time”) ; besides, if Shotcut couldn't manage the complete project at once because of its complexity and the available computer's resources, it's unlikely that whatever basic video editor provided with Windows could fare better in that regard.

[Buel]

Hi Karen, I have sent you a PM.

[abolibibelot]

[To Boris Johnson]
Hi PM, I have sent you a Karen.