What player for seamless mpeg playback?

[Richard_G]

I have 5 mpeg files in PAL DVD resolution (720 x 576, 25 fps, 8Mb CBR) that I need to play back sequentially. I am using the TV output from my ATI AIW Radeon 7500 into a video recorder to turn these 5 files into a 3 hour tape. I have tried creating a playlist and using the standard Windows Media Player that comes with Win XP Pro, but there is a pause between one file finishing and the next one starting. It isn't a long pause, maybe half a second, but during the pause the output shows a quick flash of my desktop image.

I can get around it by maximising the video image on the monitor but if I do that, I can't do anything else while I am recording the video. This wouldn't be a problem if I only wanted one copy of the tape, but I need 30+ copies!

I have done this previously using the original version of Creative Media Player that came with an old Soundblaster 1024 soundcard, but as I now have a later soundcard, I've got Media Player 2 which won't play video files.

Is there a software player that will play these files sequentially, either with no pause between one file and the next? Or a player that will output a black screen during any pause (all files fade to and from black at each end)?

Incidentally, I've got a full version of PowerDVD which came with one bit of hardware or another, but have never loaded it as I don't use the pc to play DVDs. Would this be capable of doing the job?

Thanks in advance.

Richard

[Hardcoreruss]

Do they all have the same stats ? if so why do you not join them in tmpgenc.

[Richard_G]

Do they all have the same stats ? if so why do you not join them in tmpgenc.

Damn good idea, why didn't I think of that? That is exactly what I have just done and am outputting to tape as I type this (I'm also archiving the original 5 files to DVD-R too). The main reason I didn't think of it is that the last time I did one of these big jobs I had FAT 32 format drives so had to keep each file size down (the last lot had 3 hours as 10 sequential mpg files!). Now I've gone over to NTFS, it isn't a problem anymore.

The files incidentally are two performances of a two act show at a local theatre. It was shot with three miniDV cameras from different angles and the whole lot then synchronised and edited. The 5 files were one of each act and the fifth being the rolling credits to go on the end. As I'd edited an act at a time and saved each finished one as a separate file, it simply didn't occur to me to lump them all together.

Thanks for the advice.

Richard