Newbie

[mrfargoreed]

I want to join mpeg files and avi files together, which I have software for. However, once I join the files together, my Windows media Player tells me that the files are not compatible, even though I can view each file individually.

I am new to this, so be gentle. What I want to do is be able to view joined mpeg or avi files and burn them to CD and view them on my PC. I have a converter, but am a little unsure which format to convert files to. Should I convert avi and mpeg files into another format before joining and viewing? What is the best way of joining various movie file types so I can view them all once they are joined. I thought this would be so simple, lol!

Please help! Many thanks

Fargo

[benedict]

You definitely should check out available/linkable tutorials from this site. They will provide a much better explanation than I will.

You say that you can view all of these files individually, so you obviously have the necessary codecs installed on your system. But you say you are new, so you are going to need to know what a codec is anyways.

Video files, when uncompressed, are massive! A one hour video could easily eat all of a 20 Gig disk up. Enter codecs. These are, if you will, "recipies" for compressing those files (a very great deal, obviously). Wherever you got these files, someone used a codec to shrink their size. You need and have the same codec they used to shrink it. Otherwise, you couldn't expand and view it. (You'll need this for later.)

Now, download VirtualDub. You'll find it in the software section here. Good, that's done!

Now we get a bit tricky for a newbie (we all were at one time). VirtualDub will open both MPEG and AVI files, but can only join AVI files. Already a problem for you, isn't it? Not really. What you need to do is open (in VirtualDub) each of your MPEGs and select "File ==> Save as AVI". Now you've got an AVI instaed of an MPEG.

Oops! Your AVIs are coming out at a hundred Megs and more, and that's only if your input clips are short. What's happened is that you just saved those new clips in uncompressed format. Remember codecs from above? You didn't use one, hence your monster files.

So, before you "Save as AVI", select "Video ==> Compression". When you do, VirtualDub will list all codecs it sees on your system and allow you to select one. At this point, it will all get fuzzy. The different codecs offer different options as to how they allow you to compress, and you'll simply have to do a trial-and-error until you find an acceptable output file size and an acceptable quality level for your viewing. But which codec to select?

Since you have a bunch of AVIs. you probably have a codec called DivX. Very popular, and I'll use that as an example. (If you don't, you can get that too via this site's download section.) To start with, select "Quality based" from the DivX menu. Mind you, I'm just suggesting this because it is your first time. Quality-based is easiest to understand for a novice.

If you ran that first MPEG thru VirtualDub without compression and got something with a hundered Megs, you'd think you had to set you quality level to 50% to halve your file size. Not so at all. Drop it to 90% or 85%, and your output file might well drop to a tenth of the size of the uncompressed video. (That's why we use codecs!)

OK. Now you've got everything to AVI, and the rest is simple. Open the first file in your intended sequence in VirtualDub, and then open the rest in sequence using whatever command on VDub'S "File" menu it is that appends the next AVI to it. (Sorry, but the hard drive I have VirtualDub on just threw up the words "imminent failure" on me, but don't worry, You'll know when you read that menu which one I'm talking about.

Now you're all set. "Save as AVI" (don't forget your codec) and you now have your new video.

A final note: If your frame sizes or frames per second are not identical for all of the videos you want to merge, they simply won't merge. This too can be dealt with, but you are dealing with levels of complexity here that are well beyond your newbie status. Even if this occurs however, you'll probably be best off by getting thru all the "Convert to AVI" stuff at least. It's possible to do all of this in one step, by the way, but that is way in the future for you.

Welcome to the video world, by the way. Deep as Hell, but if you persist, you'll get there.