merge AC3

[wild4trv30]

I am using the guidlines on this site for creating high quality MPEG using TMpeg which suggests converting video only and encode the audio to AC3 with a separate tool. I've done that with success. However, I now have a project with three AVIs that I am converting to one MPEG (m2v) file. I can get the three AC3s with my encoder, but how do I splice/merge them to be used with the one video file I will get and author in DVDLabPRo?

Should I somehow merge the 3 AVI/Wavs first and then covert to AC3?

Thanks.

[guns1inger]

I would load the three avis into virtualdub (load, append, append) then save the combined file out as a single wav file. I have also been able to use the technique to successfully join AC3audio tracks as well.

[NoFace]

There's some alternatives here https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1317061. At the bottom of Baldrick's post he describes using the command prompt to join the files. I've used this method alot, and it works very well. I actually use BeSplit to fix the file afterwards, though. I guess for your purposes it would be "copy /b 1.ac3+2.ac3+3.ac3 all.ac3 "

[whitejremiah]

hehe...yea....copy /b is VERY useful...probably one of the most useful DOS commands in existance......other than the basics of course.......you should be able to use this for all sorts of differant files provided the files are like the same settings (bitrate, resolution in video, ect...)

[mats.hogberg]

you should be able to use this for all sorts of differant files provided the files are like the same settings (bitrate, resolution in video, ect...)

Er.. No. The prerequisite is that the joined files don't have headers. AC3 doesn't, so this kind of concatenation works fine. You can't perform the same trick with Word documents, or VOB files or AVIs or - You get the point!


/Mats

[wild4trv30]

Thanks everyone for your replies. I went with the VirtualDub option and converted to AC3 using ffmpeggui. I was concerned that the merge would somehow be out-of-sync with the m2v, but when I compiled it just now in DVDLab-Pro, it was right on.

I have been dragging my feet to upgrade from ME to XP, but I am glad to see that there are great work-arounds for my 4 gig file size limit.

I have had VirtualDub for sometime now, but have not used it much--mainly due to a somewhat "cryptic" interface. However, it has been quite useful on a few occasions.

Thanks again.