How to losslessly combine multiple AVI files into a single file?

Question

I would like to combine multiple movie clips with .mov and .avi extension into a single file. Is there any free software in the market that is good and able to perform that?

Preferably that should work without any loss in quality.

Solution 1

I use Avidemux for tasks like this.

Process with Avidemux is as follows:

1. Choose File->Open and select the first file

2. Choose File->Append and select the next file. Repeat this step until all the files you want to append to the first file have been appended.

3. Choose Save and select location and filename

Solution 2

Try mencoder or ffmpeg, both free, both good.

Mencoder

mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -o output.avi input1.avi input2.avi

FFmpeg

From the FFmpeg Wiki article on how to concatenate (join, merge) media files:

Create a file "mylist.txt" with all the files you want to have concatenated in the following form ( Lines starting with a dash are ignored ) :

# this is a comment
file '/path/to/file1'
file '/path/to/file2'
file '/path/to/file3'

Note that these can be either relative or absolute paths. Then you can encode your files with:

ffmpeg -f concat -i mylist.txt -c copy output

Solution 3

Easy Video Joiner can join multiple AVI, MPEG (MPG), RM (Real Media) or WMV/ASF (Window Media) files into one large movie file. You can add an unlimited number of video files as you like to the list and easily rearrange their order if needed. With just a few mouse clicks, you can enjoy your movie clips without interruption.

Easy Video Joiner is freeware.

Comments

[quack quixote]

are you looking for simple concatenation (joining end-to-end), or are you looking for something more complicated (non-linear editing)?

[Lopper]

Something simple and easy to use for joining end-to-end.

[Lopper]

Will there be any loss of quality by using Mencoder or FFmpeg?

[Lopper]

Will there be any quality loss?

[quack quixote]

if you're joining multiple files of different codecs, yes, loss of quality is likely -- the tool will need to re-encode the streams so the final stream uses the same codec/bitrate throughout.

[quack quixote]

@lopper: if you're joining multiple files of different codecs, yes, loss of quality is likely -- the tool will need to re-encode the streams so the final stream uses the same codec/bitrate throughout.

[Lopper]

Would appreciate if you can provide the procedure for performing such operations in avidemux.

[0xC0000022L]

Best answer, too few upvotes and not accepted. Shame ... +1 from me.

[Sk8erPeter]

The FFmpeg tutorial was very useful, thank you, +1 for your answer! I used concat with the file list input as shown in the example, and it worked flawlessly. One of the easiest methods I've seen so far for concatenating videos (which are in similar formats).

[slhck]

@Sk8erPeter The tutorial is (relatively) new and didn't exist at the time blahdiblah wrote the original answer, as the concat demuxers, the concat protocol and filters hadn't been developed back then.

[Sk8erPeter]

@slhck: OK, but I found this method via the linked FAQ yesterday (I edited the original answer to update the link to the new one, which already contained concat; and after that, you updated the answer again pasting the mentioned method and linking the very page which describes the method in detail, which was even a better idea :) ). So this was a great help anyway. :) It would be good to know whether there's a fine GUI built on top of that method with FFmpeg.

[w4etwetewtwet]

@Lopper Provide the -sameq option to ffmpeg to ensure lossless encoding.

[Jürgen Steinblock]

@handuel -sameq has been removed ffmpeg.org/…

[Elder Geek]

@Lopper Instructions added

[Gruber]

You may need to add safe 0 in the command: stackoverflow.com/questions/38996925/…