mpg files

[mytigor]

i have two files with a .mpg file extention, both are over 750mb, and are two halves of a movie. can anyone tell me what i need to do to these files to be able to burn them as one file on a dvd, and be able to view this on a stand alone dvd player. i'm not opposed to a multiple step process if need be, but i will need to be directed step-by-step. i have searched the forums but have yet to find anything on a .mpg extention. in the future, which file extention for movies should i look for, which would be easiest to deal with (conversions,etc.) since i am very new to making dvd's? thanks for any help!
p.s. is there a program out there that will analyze and tell you exactly what extention the file you are analyzing is?

[hotwings]

.mpg is the same thing as mpeg, so you might want to search for mpeg as well. To join the files try tmpgenc which you can find in the tools section. When its installed, go to the file menu then select mpeg tools, then pick "merge & cut", select your two mpeg files and then select the output directory and name and select run.

Now chances are that you downloaded a vcd (mpeg1) or svcd (mpeg2) file. Mpeg1 should be fine although the audio needs to be 48k, mpeg2 (I specifically mean svcd mpeg2, because dvds are authored in mpeg2 too)needs to be reauthored to play on a dvd, or you can use a "header trick" (do a search if you're interested). Look under dvd-r to see the specifications for a dvd video. Some programs like uleads dvd movie factory or something like mydvd will automatically try to make the conversion for you, so if you have a dvd authoring program like that you might want to load the joined mpeg into one of those and let them do the authoring. Otherwise you'll have to do it by hand and that means changing the resolution and maybe the audio frequency.

Sounds complicated, but really isn't once you get the hang of it. A good program to download is avicodec. It tells you useful information about media files you download, such as resolution, codec etc. Good luck.

[Laddydaddy]

The E-Z way is to join the two files in TMPG as hotwings suggests. The only problem is that you may get a loud screech at the point where they are joined. Once you have one file, load it into svcd2dvdpmg. It will convert the audio to DVD compliant audio and rewrite the header to make the resolution look DVD compliant. The program is freeware. Just follow the link for svcd2dvdmpg+ in the "latest news" section of this web site's home page. The standard version is freeware, the plus version is not. You can download TMPG from the tools section of this web page.

[mytigor]

thank you hotwings and Laddydaddy for your suggestions, i'll give them both a try.