HOWTO Merge video files

You have file1.(mpg|avi) and file2.(mpg|avi) and you want to create a longer video file3.(mpg|avi) using both these clips. This is kind of difficult to do, but it's very possible.

Introduction

Video file merging requires that the files you want to merge have the same resolution and file format.

File formats

Avi

Use avimerge if you want to merge two .avi video files. The syntax is:

avimerge -o name -i file1 [ file2 [ ... ] ] [ -p file ] [
-a num ] [ -A num ] [ -b num ] [ -c ] [ -f commentfile ] [
-x indexfile ]

See the avimerge manual page for details.

Mpeg

mpgjoin, which is a part of mpgtx

The command is used like this:

mpgjoin file1.mpg file2.mpg file3.mpg -o newfile.mpg

You can (obviously) also simply use a wildcard if you have a folder full of .mpg files with the same resolution:

mpgjoin *.mpg -o test.mpg

The "fine" manual for mpgjoin isn't that fine (it is the same as the mpgtx manual, which this command is a part of). This is the output of -h:

mpgjoin  : join compatible mpeg files into one
Usage    : mpgjoin [command] [options] [mpegfile [mpegfile | range]...
Commands :
  -h              print this help screen.
  -v              print version informations.
Options  :
  -N              Do not print out excessive information while processing
                  If you use MacOS Classic, this is RECOMMENDED
                  Otherwise mpgtx will be dead slow!
  -f              force overwriting of files, don't ask for confirmation
  -P              keep headers of mpegs which sometimes is usefull
  -X              Try to search for a valid PACK header in the whole file.
                  Additionally option -N suppress output during search.
                  This may result in an endless loop if not successfull!
  -An             While joining or splitting, aspect ratio will be forced to:
                  n=1 -> 1:1, n=2 -> 4:3, n=3 -> 16:9, n=4 -> 2.21:1 
                  All Numbers from 0 - 16 will be accepted but the above are valid!
  -o FILE         set the output file name (join implied)
                  if FILE is - , standard output will be used
  --force         force joining of incompatible files
  --no-parachute  don't try to catch SIGSEGV (usefull for debugging)
Ranges   :
  Ranges must follow an mpeg file
  [a-b]           from 'a' inclusive to 'b' inclusive. If you want half opened
                  ranges, you may want to use ]a-b], [a-b[ or ]a-b[ instead
  [num/total]     the 'num' part if the mpeg file was split in 'total'.
                  [1/4] would result in the first quarter of the mpeg file.
Values   :
  Values can be time or offsets in the mpeg file
  Time Format     HH:MM:SS where the HH: part can be omited
  Offset Format   a number optionally followed by:
                    M : offset is in Megabytes
                    k : offset is in Kilobytes
  An empty value means the corresponding file boundary:
                  [-10M]  the first 10 Megabytes of file
                  [500M-] from 500 Megabytes to the end of file

Note:

It is also possible to just cat MPG files and pipe them to a program if you need to input several video files to a tool:

cat file1.mpg file2.mpg file3.mpg | ffmpeg -i - -ar 44100 flashvideofile.flv

See also

• HOWTO Convert video files

References

Multimedia

HOWTO	Players	Rippers and Converters
Howto work with audio and video formats using command-line tools.Audio formats HOWTO Convert audio files HOWTO Dump audio streams from the Internet HOWTO Dump audio streams from a video file Video formats HOWTO Convert video files HOWTO Make a video DVD HOWTO Make a video (S)VCD HOWTO Dump video streams from the Internet	Xine Totem MPlayer GMPlayer KMPlayer Audio (only) players: Music Player Daemon	Video DVD rippers Dvd::rip - DVD ripper and encoder Avidemux2 Video downloaders youtube-dl (Fetches Youtube.com videos) Audio CD rippers KAudioCreator Ogg Theora encoders: Ffmpeg2theora