Join DVs or MPEGs?

[phatslug]

I have 30+ large DV files which I'd like to join into one, but I dont have the temporary space to do it. Now after I would join these into one, Id wanna encode it to MPEG.

Will I achieve the same results if I convert each individual DV to MPEG, then join those?

Most of the files are different scenes, but several of them, my capturing app just decided to (seemingly) randomly split them, so Id really like it to be frame-exact joining. Will this work with MPEG2? Any reason I should NOT do this?

[Tommyknocker]

You would lose one generation of encoding over just joining the DVs. Since DV is such a high quality, you may barely notice the loss in quality. I suggest you do a small sampling of your final product to see if it meets your specifications.

[ZippyP.]

I have 30+ large DV files which I'd like to join into one, but I dont have the temporary space to do it.

If you frameserve from say Virtualdub, then you don't have to save to an intermediate file (saves space). Vdub will join the files and then feed it directly to your encoder, you can filter your capture at the same time. Check the guides for frameserving.

[phatslug]

Zippy, your idea is great

but Im having this problem

I open up one DV file in VDub, then I go Append Segment, select the second one, but it tells me "different file formats" and fails.

Looking at my DV files with AVICodec, they all have slightly different bitrates for video (like 29003, 28978...) I mean, really close. Is there any way for this this to work, hey, theyre all DV files, same thing.

Oh and TommyKnocker: to clarify myself, the end result will be an MPEG, now the question was join the DV's first, or encode to MPEG first.

[ZippyP.]

Looking at my DV files with AVICodec, they all have slightly different bitrates for video (like 29003, 28978...) I mean, really close. Is there any way for this this to work, hey, theyre all DV files, same thing.

Damn! I don't have any ideas, other than re-encoding to the same bitrate. There's always a loss when you do that though. Anyone else?

[holistic]

......... now the question was join the DV's first, or encode to MPEG first.

Join first (edit / add filters or whatever !) then encode

As suggested you can 'frameserve' the DV segments to your mpeg2 encoder to save making one large DV (avi) file.

VDub will do this , so will Premiere, Vegas and a few other NLE (non linear editing) programs.

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