Combining video files

[jambroseus]

Hi all,

I have several 3.7 GB video files that I thought I would combine into one long video but the time it take to do so is extremely long. I am using VideoPad by NCH, is there another way to do this that is faster?

Thanks,
John

 

[Flycaster]

Video edting/rendering takes a lot of processor power, ram, and time......
Use a faster computer, with at least 4/8bg of ram, and a dedicated video card with lots of memory, 8gb. The higher the resolution, the more time it will take.
But it will still take time. Get all cued up, and set the way you want, then, this is the important part:

Have 2 fingers of The Macallan, hit the start/render button, and go to bed.
In the a.m., should be done....

 

[StantonZ]

Probably not the answer you were looking for, but the easiest way to solve that problem is shoot in HD instead of 4k.

 

[normanh2]

Video edting/rendering takes a lot of processor power, ram, and time......
Use a faster computer, with at least 4/8bg of ram, and a dedicated video card with lots of memory, 8gb. The higher the resolution, the more time it will take.
But it will still take time. Get all cued up, and set the way you want, then, this is the important part:

Have 2 fingers of The Macallan, hit the start/render button, and go to bed.
In the a.m., should be done....

I'll just take the 2 fingers of "The Macallan" especially if it is 25 YO !!

 

[DanMan32]

Probably not the answer you were looking for, but the easiest way to solve that problem is shoot in HD instead of 4k.

Won't help if the recording is over 15 minutes.

 

[Pappy]

If all you want to do is merge all of the files from one long take into just one file you can use "ffmpeg". The process is extremely fast as ffmpeg is only concating the clips to just one file, no processing is performed. GoPro also splits long video clips into several chapters (files) like DJI does. Here is the command I used to merge three GoPro files into one.

ffmpeg -i concat:"GOPR6076.MP4|GR016076.MP4|GP026076.MP4" -c copy GOPR6076_merged.MP4

where GOPR6076.MP4 is the first file,
GR016076.MP4 is the second file and
GP026076.MP4 is the third file
Order is important, so you will want to add the filenames in the order they were recorded.

 

[Kilrah]

Use avidemux, drag the first clip into the window, then drag each of the following clips, set output format to mp4 and save, will take seconds and not lose quality like your current solution.

 

[Pappy]

If all you want to do is merge all of the files from one long take into just one file you can use "ffmpeg". The process is extremely fast as ffmpeg is only concating the clips to just one file, no processing is performed. GoPro also splits long video clips into several chapters (files) like DJI does. Here is the command I used to merge three GoPro files into one.

ffmpeg -i concat:"GOPR6076.MP4|GR016076.MP4|GP026076.MP4" -c copy GOPR6076_merged.MP4

where GOPR6076.MP4 is the first file,
GR016076.MP4 is the second file and
GP026076.MP4 is the third file
Order is important, so you will want to add the filenames in the order they were recorded.

OK, I ran a test and a change will need to be made to how the list of files to be concatenated are passed to "ffmpeg". The command is -

ffmpeg -f concat -i DJIMerge.txt -c copy CompleteVideo.mp4

The contents of the file "DJIMerge.txt" contains the list of files to be concatenated in the format of
file 'DJI_0001.mp4'
with one entry per line.

"CompleteVideo.mp4" can be any name you want to give to the merged video files output.

For example, in the test I performed the contents for the file DJIMerge.txt contained -
file '20201119-DJI_0004.mp4'
file '20201119-DJI_0005.mp4'
file '20201119-DJI_0006.mp4'

The total # of bytes for the three files added up to - 7,915,728,547
The byte count for the merged video file is 7,915,774,235
Elapsed time to produce - 3 min 15 secs, source and destination files on the same drive
1 min 35 secs, source and destination files on different drives

 

[Pappy]

For anyone trying the "AVIDEMUX" program here are the settings used to just merge the files to a single mp4 file. It took me a few tries to get to these settings in order to get a merged output instead of re-encoding.

 

[Pappy]

will take seconds

You must be using SSD drives. For an external USB 3.0 drive it took 2 min 13 seconds to import 3 files (total byte count - 7,915,728,547) and 5 min 49 secs to merge files.