Want to Merge several movie videos into one

[tman801]

I dual boot both W11 and Ubuntu 22.04.
I recently d/led a 6hr+ movie from the internet and used VLC to only record the parts that I wanted. It is in several videos but it fits nicely on a DVD+R DL. I would like to merge it into one Video. I am not technically smart when it comes to doing this. Is there a simple tool that I could use to merge a 6hr video into one video? All the videos are MP4.

Thanks for any replies.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

I did once (a couple of years ago) with OBS Studio a presentation for a meeting (42 min total). I recorded several scenes with OBS, and at the end concatenated them using FFmpeg (all under Ubuntu),

[Moonchild]

I always use virtualdub for these kinds of simple editing operations, but I'm not sure how easy to use it would be for you.

[RealityRipple]

Can't you just toss them all into MKVToolNixGUI? No re-encoding necessary.

[suzyne]

I like using Avidemux for simple operations, and anything more complicated with lots of cuts or resizing the final video, Shotcut does the job.

[Ghostwalker]

Depending on how much power your PC/Laptop has will of course determine how long it will take to merge them together. Be wary about the heat produced by hours of merging. Avidemux is perfect for this, if there is an overabundance of heat you can pause it and resume later. Make sure all your mp4 clips have the same dimensions (1980x1020 or 1280x720, etc.) If they are the same size, merging them will be fast with no re-encoding necessary. If they are different you will have to use Avidemux to resize a video to make sure they are all the same. Drag and drop all the clips, 1st, 2nd, 3rd... in order into Avidemux and it will merge them together when you click the 'Save Video' button. But first you have to go up to the 'Audio' tab on top and make sure the audio is identical across all yours clips: Audio > Select Track > Track 1 - then look across to where it says 'copy' and click the drop down and choose a compatible audio codec. AC3 (lav) is high quality and once you choose it the next button to the right is 'Configure' and you can choose a bitrate. This will ensure all audio across your merged mp4's are identical.
Hope this helps

[tman801]

Thanks to all who replied with suggestions. Sorry to take so long to reply. I had promised someone special that I would record Band of Brothers for them by Veterans Day. I had 9 of the episodes and finally after much surfing found episode 10 and all were mkv. I had found a program that would convert mkv's to mp4's & then merge them into one. It was Aiseesoft video converter and it was very simple to operate for me. After converting them I saved them to a special folder. I used VLC to record just what I wanted and each was saved as mp4's. I then used Video Recorder to relist the mp4s and set "save to special folder", clicked merge and then convert. I then let it do it do its thing and later I had a continuous movie that I downloaded to a flash drive. The program is free for up to 2 gb(I believe). Yes I did choose to pay for 1 month to record 13gbs. Considering the reason I was doing all this as the saying goes "It was money well spent".
Now I can spend some time learning how to use Avidemux thanks to Ghostwalker.
Again Thanks to all who replied.

[back2themoon]

There's also LosslessCut for you to try.

[suzyne]

There's also LosslessCut for you to try.

While Avidemux can do lossless operations, LosslessCut look like it is more actively being worked on, and even though it is an Electron app , I don't hold that against it. It looks like a good alternative!

[moonbat]

even though it is an Electron app

Which automatically makes it far more bloated than any desktop application, let alone video editing tool needs to be.

[back2themoon]

It looks like a good alternative!

To be honest, I use a paid program for lossless video editing but the few times I've tried LosslessCut, it worked.

Which automatically makes it far more bloated than any desktop application, let alone video editing tool needs to be.

I don't see why Electron should be an issue here. Lossless operations are usually simple, involving few clips you might want to join, or a single clip to trim/cut. You are not going to make an entire film "losslessly".

Bloated or not, if it works then by all means use it. It's not easy to find reliable lossless video editing software.

[andyprough]

Which automatically makes it far more bloated than any desktop application, let alone video editing tool needs to be.

Anything more than reading the ffmpeg man page and writing your own concatenate command is bloat. But of course, ffmpeg itself is bloat.

[suzyne]

Anything more than reading the ffmpeg man page and writing your own concatenate command is bloat.

I had a reason to do this a few years back, and read that by putting the list of video files into input.txt and running this command I produced my single file.

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i input.txt -codec copy output.mp4

I think I learnt this because at the time I had many files to process, and finding out how to do it from basic principles was more satisfying (and ultimately much quicker) than using the lossless feature of Avidemux.

[andyprough]

I had a reason to do this a few years back, and read that by putting the list of video files into input.txt and running this command I produced my single file.

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i input.txt -codec copy output.mp4

I think I learnt this because at the time I had many files to process, and finding out how to do it from basic principles was more satisfying (and ultimately much quicker) than using the lossless feature of Avidemux.

That's pretty cool! Anytime I learn a new command with ffmpeg I write it down for future safekeeping. Last year I had someone sending me video files that were each multiple GB's in size, and I found ffmpeg was the best tool for quickly converting them to a much smaller size while remaining clearly viewable. Learning and trying all the codecs and their conversion options was quite a task though.

[moonbat]

I don't see why Electron should be an issue here.

It's an issue everywhere, thanks to shipping a whole Chrome instance to render a webpage locally, when the native toolkit of the platform or something cross-platform like Qt would suffice. And also the long persistent issue of completely ignoring desktop UI conventions because you're just rendering a goddamn webpage and calling it a day.

[back2themoon]

I don't disagree moonbat, just sayin' that if the only free alternative to a fairly reliable Electron "app" would be editing video files (and not just simple joining) with the command line, I'd rather use the Electron monstrosity.

As for paid programs, I prefer TMPGEnc MPEG Smart Renderer which is a joy to use. Also knew of VideoReDo software, but looks like that is over. More info and alternatives discussion, here:

VideoReDo owner passed away, product ceased, seeking alternatives?

[moonbat]

I don't disagree moonbat, just sayin' that if the only free alternative to a fairly reliable Electron "app" would be editing video files (and not just simple joining) with the command line, I'd rather use the Electron monstrosity.

But that has never been the case, many of the other tools mentioned here are FOSS and have been around for decades.