Any way to combine MPG (mpeg) MOV & WMV files together?

[Sondra R. Wilson]

Listed on the freewarehome.com website:
http://member.newsguy.com/~theprof/Readme.html

We just now had to give up on Camelware MPEGJoin, despite the fact it
seemed the most simple and intuitive interface of the suggested bunch!

In order to run the free ware Camel MPEGJoin 1.0.7b, we first needed
to also install something called the "VB6 runtimes" Win32 cabinet self
extracter which came and went. We clicked on the supplied vbrun60.exe
executable multiple times but still, it came, and went in seconds. So
we assumed it installed itself, whatever it was.

The GUI for MPEGJoin is a simple affair. Just press "Add", select the
three test mpg files, and press "Join". This GUI was refreshingly
simple compared to the confusing (yet potentially much more powerful
EO-Video GUI).

There was but one visible option, that of something called the "Chunk
size" (preset to 40K bytes). For us in this dorm, our "chunk size" is
related to what we ate before drinking so we had a few early morning
laughs about what to set that particular option to (we've been up all
night without rest and we're just about out of 20oz Zero Coke caffeine
recharges).

Problem was, the program just hung there at 0% joining files. No
errors, no warnings, we still had control of the mouse so the machine
wasn't frozen or anything, but, MPEGJoin 1.0.7b just didn't move from
0% even though it had an icon at the bottom of our WinXP screen saying
"Joining Files...".

Then we hit upon the bright idea of re-installing the supplied
vbrun60.exe which now came up with a quick "File Progress" progress
bar (we had not seen that before). When we subsequently ran MPEGJoin
on the three test mpg files, the disk started thrashing (which we took
to be a good sign), but STILL the "Joining Files" remained at 0% for
five, ten, fifteen minutes.

We were about conclude MPEGJoin was a dud when someone hit upon the
bright idea of converting the mpg to mpg with TMPGEnc to see if that
made any difference; but it did not.

All in all, Camelware MPEGJoin was a dud, sadly so. Next ....

 

[Mel]

On Fri, 12 Aug 2005 18:59:55 GMT, Sondra R. Wilson wrote:

You should look in your class notes:

I'm sure you'll find all the necessary information required to complete
this project, including what software to use.

 

[Ken Maltby]

One by one we're starting to nod off (running low on supplies stop
only two of five left operational stop request resupply stop send
caffiene stop), but I'm still here to answer your questions. We
appreciate the help as we never did this before, ever, and we have to
get it done (failure is not an option).

For our ART101 Introduction to Art Appreciation class, we have to do a
video skit covering at least 36 different art works (out of a given
list of about 100) covering a dozen different categories.

Not knowing anything about the technoilogy, the five of us broke the
project down into sections and it's my lot (we drew straws, actually,
we drew lipstick ... ruby red was the loser, me) to build the DVD
assemblage.

What I have to work with are 59-second clips from people's
point-and-shoot digital cameras (mostly mov files), longer
uncompressed video avi's imported from a camcorder, plus much shorter
wmv & mpg files downloaded from the web.

As planned, we built a storyboard, reshot some of the intervening
scenes explaining the upcoming sections, and collected all the files
into one large batch list with descriptive scene names like:
local_rotting_civil_war_statue.mov
stupid_commentary_by_lisa.avi
ugly_old_lady_painting.wmv
more_stupid_commentary_by_lisa.avi
dreary_downloads_from_the_met.mpg
etc.

We *thought* we were home free .... all we needed to do was combine
these scores of files into a single video and burn it to a DVD (our
professor prefers DVD but said we could do it on CD or VHS if we
couldn't figure out how to create DVDs or if we ddn't have the
burner).

Since we have the DVD burner and since Lisa's key commentary avi's are
so unmanagebly huge and since we all want a copy of this for
posterity, we really wanted to "press" a DVD if we could.

We're close ... we figure the first step is planning it all out, the
second step is gathering the videos, then inserting the commentary,
and we're at the joining stage at this moment. Once we join them into
a single compressed mpg file (oh how I hate those huge AVIs) we hope
to burn them to DVD.

Someone mentioned we needed VOB files. We are familiar with them (sort
of) since we're well versed with copying (uh, backing up) our DVDs
with DVD Shrink 3.2. What we were hoping to do was somehow use the
reauthor mode of DVD Shrink to turn the one large mpg file (or maybe a
bunch of smaller mpg files as someone just suggested) into the
necessary IFO & VOB files that a DVD rightly needs.

To tell you the truth, we weren't sure HOW we were gonna get the
MPEG-1 files into VOB & IFO files but we were gonna hit that this
weekend (we do have until Thursday to hand this in). We've been
running blind since this project started two weeks ago and somehow we
managed to hit all our due dates in the syllabus so we hope to begin
to figure out how to convert the mpg file to DVD as soon as we get all
the files into a single MPEG-1 file. (Someone said DVD is MPEG-2 so
we're likely to have to tackle the MPEG-1 to MPEG-2 conversion next if
that is indeed the case).

Anyway, I hope I'm not rambling on too much to answer your question
(everyone in my "squad" thinks I have Hyperactive Attention Deficit
Disorder but only I know it's really the massive quantities of
caffiene talking!).

It sounds like what you have done so far is on the right track;
but, I kinda hate to break this to you, a good non destructive
Editor can work with all your clips. In such an editor all the input
gets converted to the editors native lowlevel format. The video
editing that these editors do is sometimes called "advanced editing"
to distinguish it from simple cut&join editing.

You place your clips into tracks on a "timeline" to build your
project. They also give you the ability to add transitions
between your scenes and titling as well as subtitles. They
generally support many audio, video and text effects.

Try www.videohelp.com and search under "Advanced
Editors" there should be listings that include those that will
work with all your formats.

If you can get the Demo of Magix's Movie Edit Pro to
work on your system, it is a good example of what I'm
talking about. (Don't be surprised if you can't get it to
work, not everyone does.) www.magix.com

Luck;
Ken

 

[Rick Merrill]

We were hoping to create a self-playing DVD.

Once we have the hour-long mpg file, what tool would you suggest to
convert that hour-long mpg file into a DVD VOB file so that it would
play as soon as it is inserted into a DVD player?

*I* don't know the answer to your question - I'm looking for the same
myself! Seems to me that the PC world is a jungle of tools! May be
better off sticking to MAC tools <duck>.

 

[Mel]

MAC tools <duck>

You really need to know when to duck, and when to run! ;-)

 

[kenny]

Look the thing you are trying to do is not that easy if you have not gotten
used to conversions. The problem arises is because you have to know a
multitude of things to get around the problems that occure... now that I
have said that lets go on....

I have done what you are trying to do many times with the 2 software I said.
On eovideo you make a playlist and then go to the converter tab... then it
asks you if you want to join them into one file. Its really simple if you
get used to it.
It has never crashed on me.. perhaps its a problem with your codecs..
anyway....

you can also try windows movie maker that is a part of windows XP SP2 and
you can import various files, and output one WMV video at the end... and it
is free since its included with windows, and if you have Service Pack 2
installed you have the latest version of movie maker that is 2.1.

also look into a site with lots of information... this will educate you alot
if you have the will to read through its pages.
www.videohelp.com

Kenny S
www.computerboom.net

 

[Sondra R. Wilson]

Searching, I found a MPEG Properties free ware tool
http://www.filepedia.com/video_software/video_tools/mpeg_properties.cfm

Once this MPEG properties download is up and running, I'll see if it
can tell me which mpg and mpeg files are mpeg-1 and which are mpeg-2.

But I still don't know what the difference is or why it may matter.

If anyone is out there following in our footsteps, we gave up on using
the freeware MediaLab Stockholm "MPEG Properties" version 1.00 output
to tell if the mpeg files were mpeg1 or mpeg2 (Why? Because it didn't
tell us even this very basic information.).

Instead we found the freeware MovieID version 1.02 from:
http://www.geocities.com/cplarosa/movieid/?200514

One thing we learned from MovieID was that Pinnacle Studio 9.4.3 was
writing MPEG-1 files even though we (thought we) told it to write
MPEG-2 files (especially given we had previously determined and
subsequently entered the additional 25-character "MPEG-2
Decoding/Encoding Activation Key").

Here's the results from Pinnacle Studio 9.4.3 MPEG-out command on one
of our early attempts written out by Pinnacle Studio 9.4.3:

File Name: Untitled.mpg
File Format: MPEG-1 System Stream
Author: Moving Picture Experts Group
Web Site: mpeg.telecomitalialab.com
Content: Video and Audio
Duration: 63 min 45 sec
Data Rate: 2886 kbps (ave)
Video Info: 352 x 240, 29.970 fps
Audio Info: 44100 Hz, 229.4 kbps, stereo
Audio Format: MPEG-1 Layer 2

Now that we can, some of us in this project team are still making
minor edits (creeping elegance if you ask me) to our files before we
go to the trouble of creating the DVD in Pinnacle Studio 9. I think
we're better off without the editing, but, Holly and Lisa keep
experimenting with transitions and special effects.

All the previous talks on menus is (at the moment) lost on us because
we hadn't even considered a menu (we just want the professor to stick
the DVD in her player and it would just play without any interaction
by her). Come to think of it, menus WOULD be nice so we could point to
each of the different "tracks" but we have to first figure out how to
use Pinnacle to create the DVD and then worry about the menus.

We'll keep you informed (as soon as we know what we're doing).

We much appreciate all your help as we're closer to the wire than we
had wanted to be. It's due Thursday morning at 9am so we hope to
finish the process by tonight (Sunday) and burn the DVD tomorrow
(Monday) so we can get back to studying art!

 

[Sondra R. Wilson]

Searching, I found a MPEG Properties free ware tool

Here's the results from Pinnacle Studio 9.4.3 MPEG-out command on one
of our early attempts written out by Pinnacle Studio 9.4.3:

File Name: Untitled.mpg
File Format: MPEG-1 System Stream
Author: Moving Picture Experts Group
Web Site: mpeg.telecomitalialab.com
Content: Video and Audio
Duration: 63 min 45 sec
Data Rate: 2886 kbps (ave)
Video Info: 352 x 240, 29.970 fps
Audio Info: 44100 Hz, 229.4 kbps, stereo
Audio Format: MPEG-1 Layer 2

We're getting better. And we're still getting surprised.

First, since it takes a while to work with 60-minute videos we're
learning to run tests on small files first!

Secondly, we finallly created our first MPEG-2 file by setting Avid
Studio 9.4.3 to output MPEG-2 Video and MPEG-1 Layer-2 Audio.

After doing so, the freeware MPEG Properties program now confirms we
created our first successful test MPEG-2 file, as follows:

File Name: test.mpg
File Format: MPEG-2 Program Stream
Author: Moving Picture Experts Group
Web Site: mpeg.telecomitalialab.com
Content: Video and Audio
Duration: 8 min 16 sec
Video Info: 720 x 480, 29.970 fps
Audio Info: 48000 Hz, 229.4 kbps, stereo
Audio Format: MPEG-1 Layer 2

Note all previous attempts by us had created MPEG1 files as noted by
the "MPEG Properties" line below:
File Format: MPEG-1 System Stream
vs
File Format: MPEG-2 Program Stream
These results are proof we finally have MPEG-2 files.

However, we're dissapointed with the results which are not only twice
as large in disk size but which are jumpy at best when played in the
Windows Media Player. It turns out, unexpectedly, the original MPEG-1
files were a much better quality so, after all this trouble to create
MPEG-2 files, we may delete them and go with the better quality MPEG 1
files after all.

 

[Jan B]

On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 10:53:10 GMT, Sondra R. Wilson

However, we're dissapointed with the results which are not only twice
as large in disk size but which are jumpy at best when played in the
Windows Media Player. It turns out, unexpectedly, the original MPEG-1
files were a much better quality so, after all this trouble to create
MPEG-2 files, we may delete them and go with the better quality MPEG 1
files after all.

Conversion will often reduce quality. To possibly gain anything, for
the parts that have better original quality, you would need to go back
to the originals and convert directly to MPEG-2.

The main point is that if the disc is supposed to be watched on a TV,
you should make a test-disc to check on a stand-alone+TV. Displaying
on a computer works differently.
/Jan

 

[Margrave of Brandenburg]

Instead we found the freeware MovieID version 1.02 from:
http://www.geocities.com/cplarosa/movieid/?200514

Nice utility. Too bad it's a command line deal. No Windows integration.

It needs updating, too. It never heard of "xvid".

 

[Sondra R. Wilson]

The main point is that if the disc is supposed to be watched on a TV,
you should make a test-disc to check on a stand-alone+TV. Displaying
on a computer works differently.

We understand, as we've cop... uh ... archived lots of DVDs in our day
where the VIDEO_TS.IFO file plays just fine on a computer but the
hardware standalone DVD Player just grinds away and says "Can't read
disc" or something like that on the TV screen.

The good news is we are very close to burning and testing our very
first DVD created from scratch in our lives!

- We created and collected all the mov, wmv, avi, mpg files
- We converted them (back) to MPEG-1 using TMPGEnc 2.5
- We merged them together using DVTool 0.53
- We edited them using Avid (formerly Pinnacle) Studio 9
- We rendered to MPEG & compiled to DVD with Studio 9

Once we figure out how to add an initial root menu that pops up for
about ten seconds and if nothing is hit it then proceeds to play the
video, then we will run our test burn (we'll probably delete the
Volume and Archive files created by Studio 9 once we figure out what
they do and don't do).

At that point we will certainly test the results in a variety of
standalone hardware DVD players!

Thanks for the advice. After having written this up, I'm wondering if
the step to combine the various clips into a single MPEG using CM's
Digital Video Tool 0.53 was necessary. It seems, in hindsight, instead
of converting the various types of clips to MPEG and then combining
them into a single MPEG only to break them down into 1-second "scenes"
in Studio 9 was probably a waste.

Don't you think we can skip the first two steps (converting the clips
to mpg and combining them into a single long mpg)? Our first try at
importing wmv and mov files into Studio 9 failed so we wonder if
Studio can read those two types of files (it seems to read avi and mpg
files just fine).

Do we really need to convert MOV & WMV files to MPG before loading
into Studio 9?

 

[Sondra R. Wilson]

Nice utility.
Too bad it's a command line deal.
No Windows integration.

Actually, we found it had a pseudo-Windows integration by reading the
readme that was supplied with this MPEG type-identification software.

As you found out, running the "movieid.exe" command-line tool:
c:\> movieid myvideo.mpg
would report if the mpg was mpeg-1 or mpeg-2 (among other things).

As for a Windows GUI, we found (by reading the help & readme) that the
author recommended us creating a shortcut to the "movieidw.exe"
executable and then simply dragging the myvideo.mpg file onto that
shortcut would bring up the results in Notepad.

Sure it's kludgy, but this pseudo-windows-gui MPEG analyser was the
only MPEG type identifier we found that didn't require us to write our
own C++ code to read the first 8k or 16k bytes of the file for the
sequence header ( 00 00 01 b3 ) to see if it was immediately followed
by a sequence extension ( 00 00 01 b5 ) which would make it MPEG2
instead of MPEG1.

As far as we could find out, MovieID was the *only* freeware tool out
there that told us whether a file was MPEG-1 or MPEG-2.
http://www.geocities.com/cplarosa/movieid/?200514

However, we do agree with you on the lack of a (real) Windows GUI.

Do you know of a better freeware tool to determine MPEG type that
comes with a Windows GUI?

 

[Sondra R. Wilson]

The help talks about "menu tracks" vs "video tracks" which is

confusing to us as we don't *see* any tracks but we're working on it.

We finally visualized the "menu track" when we switched from "View
Storyboard" to "View Timeline". Finally, a pink (menu) and yellow
(timescale) set of tracks showed up above the blue (video) track in
Studio 9 editing mode.

In the pink (menu) set of tracks was an M1 (standing for Menu #1) at
the beginning and a "return to menu #1" at the end of the video track
(we don't know how it got to the end but it's there at the end, by
default, we guess).

Also in the pink set of menu tracks was a "C1" which the Studio 9 help
says is the link for the first of fifteen "menu links". Interestingly
this link was NOT at the start of a chapter .... it was near the
middle (we didn't know you could set a menu to start midway through a
chapter so we learned something new).

But there were no other menu links for the other fifteen chapters we
*thought* we set when we edited the menu in the first place.

Not to despair, we soon learned (by trial and error mostly) that one
could left click on the edited menu to select the chapter #2 icon, and
then right click on the pink menu-editing track to hit "set disc
chapter". the problem was we couldn't tell, by looking at the menu
bar, exactly *which* chapter it was we were setting!

We even found that if we added a "return to menu #1" anywhere in the
middle of the timeline, then the movie would STOP at that point and
return to the menu. Now we have a much greater appreciation for what
goes on in a "real" DVD as we've always wondered what makes the DVD do
what it does. (Just for spite, we should fgure out how to add PUOs so
that the professor can't skip past any of our content!).

When we burn this DVD, would you add an empty AUDIO_TS directory?

The reason we ask is that it's not in the help and Shrink DVD always
creates an empty AUDIO_TS directory yet Studio 9 did not create an
empty AUDIO_TS directory?

What would be the difference with or without an AUDIO_TS directory?

 

[Joe]

Doing a skit, we need to combine very many multiple 30-second clips
together on our windows xp laptops to bring to summer school class for
our final team project.

First question is does anyone know how to concatonate the same type of
files together into a single file in batch or very quick modes?

Second question is does anyone know how to combine different file
types together (mpeg, mpg, mov, & wmv)?

Can we do it with free stuff?
(We don't have much time or money and it's due next Thursday so I'm
asking BEFORE researching so just give me a name or two and I can look
them up please).

Everything just start from basic. So just continue wherever you have
already started.

1. Batch Converting I have heard, but never heard of Batch Joining. To join
multiple same_file (different with Batch) there are some but I don't
remember the name (see below)

You may be able to do using BAT command, but I don't remember all small
detail to post here (used to be DOS man, but haven't touched for years)

2. In order to combine Orange & Apple (2 different format) you will first
need to marry them to bear a Orapple child <g>, then find the program
supports Orapple to do the joining.

Same with Mpeg, Mpg, Mov, Wmv (you can join Mpeg & Mpg as MPG is short for
MPEG), you just need to convert them to ONE FORMAT then combine them.

3. What you need is a CONVETRER supports the format you want to convert
To/From. After converted them to same format, you should be able to join
them within few seconds/minutes.

Your question is so general to give more specific answer, so I would
suggest to point your browser to www.videohelp.com and check out the listof
Free/Shareware converters, and pick the one you like and go from there.

 

[Joe]

The links were bad at that web page so I moved on to something called
TMPGEnc
http://www.videohelp.com/tmpgencedit.htm

Hopefully TMPGEnc will allow our group to concatonate very many
multiple 30-second mpg, mov, and wmv files together into a single DVD.

I'll keep researching but if you have some good directions to try
please post the name so I can then download and try it out.

TMPGenc DVD Author? it doesn't do converting and only accept
Mpeg-DVD-Ready format. Since TMPGenc (video conveter) is rather old, I
don't know if it supports newer format like WMV or not, but pointing to
www.videohelp.com is a good idea as he can read and check out other's.

 

[Joe]

Thanks for the pointer to Evideo and TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress.

I had already downloaded TMPGEnc-2.524.63.18-Free.zip by the time I
saw your message. The names 'seem' similar but the stuff I picked up
is definately freeware whereas the stuff you pointed me to has a
similar (but different) name.

When I read what each does, I get even more confused than before (I
don't know what half the terms mean, but, I keep looking them up one
by one).

With respect to what we are trying to accomplish tonight, is there a
simple way to state what the difference is between the freeware
TSUNAMI-MPEG Encoder" TMPGEnc 2.5 download I already installed (from
http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_faq.html ) and the trialware TMPGEnc 3.0
XPress at http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/te3xp.html which you
so kindly recommended?

Are they essentially the same thing?

Same company but different products. Womble Mpeg Video Wizard is not
freeware, and I don't know if they have trial version or not, but it's one
of a very useful converters.

I was using TMPGenc v2.x Plus for many years (haven't used much for 1-2
years) and it's getting old so no longer useful for me. I have looked at
their newer products like the Xpress/Editor and don't like neither one (too
slow and don't serve me well), but they are newer product so they may
support the WMV and MOV format.

 

[Joe]

To join mulitple MPG, WAV, AVI, MOV, etc. files, we soon found out
that you can't just select the files to join; instead, you have to
create something they call a "playlist" (so I'll call it that too). To
do this you apparently click on the eovideo EXPLORER tab and select
the three test MPG files and then drag them over to a playlist pane
(otherwise the next step fails) & then hit File, Save As,
"Playlist1.eop".

Well, even you find the program allows you to join different file formats,
I would still suggest to use the standard basic process.

- Converting them to same format. Cuz even the program allows you to
select diff. format, it *still* have to convert to same format before
joining. IOW, there is no way MPG file can contain AMV, MOV, RM, DVD, AVI
etc. or other way around.

 

[Joe]

For our ART101 Introduction to Art Appreciation class, we have to do a
video skit covering at least 36 different art works (out of a given
list of about 100) covering a dozen different categories.

Not knowing anything about the technoilogy, the five of us broke the
project down into sections and it's my lot (we drew straws, actually,
we drew lipstick ... ruby red was the loser, me) to build the DVD
assemblage.

These are what you want.

1. Point your browser to web site like www.videohelp.com to find a converter
you like, and convert all format to MPG. It may not take more than some
minutes to convert each small slip.

2. You can join if you wish *but* you do not need to join them. Or just add
all those small clips (MPG files) as separated chapter, and they will work
just as good.

3. Pick the DVD Author (if small then just use CDR program like Nero to
burn as VCD would do) to create DVD. DVD Authoring, you have about 2
choice about the format

- The one with built-in converter will accept different formats, and will
spend extra time converting to Mpeg-DVD-Ready (or VOB depending on the
setting)

- The one only accept Mpeg-DVD-Ready then you will have to convert to the
format it supports. It will take some time to convert to Mpeg-DVD
ready, but it will reduce the DVD Auhtoring time (and you have the
converter of your choice)

IOW, don't waste time trying to find the magical way as there ain't any.

 

[Joe]

Searching, I found a MPEG Properties free ware tool
http://www.filepedia.com/video_software/video_tools/mpeg_properties.cfm

Once this MPEG properties download is up and running, I'll see if it
can tell me which mpg and mpeg files are mpeg-1 and which are mpeg-2.

But I still don't know what the difference is or why it may matter.

MPEG-1 = Video CD
MPEG-2 = Super Video CD

Then we have PAL vs NTSC as well as some none-standard MPEG (S/VCD)
formats. TMPGenc, you can look at the Format report (resolution and
framerate) at botton, or you can check the Properties from many Media
Players.

 

[Joe]

We were hoping to create a self-playing DVD.

Once we have the hour-long mpg file, what tool would you suggest to
convert that hour-long mpg file into a DVD VOB file so that it would
play as soon as it is inserted into a DVD player?

*If* it's more than 800MB (the CD-R can hold) then go for DVD, if it's
under 800MB then no need to make DVD as it won't gain you anything.

To create DVD, you just need a DVD Author program (do not and don't want
to convert to VOB, or just let the DVD Author do the work). Unless some
special request, I don't often suggest any specific program, but I can tell
you that TMPGenc DVD Author is the program I use.

Also, if your stand alone DVD player can play MPG then you can burn MPG
firectly to DVD or CD-R and they will play fine.