Didn't want to leave this thread hanging.
Once I tried WLMM I was happy with my results, just for my simple purposes, as can be seen by the link in post #25. (here's one with a hotter airplane) If I get more ambitious I'll come back and try some more of everyone's suggestions.
Thanks for all the help,
Rusty
I have chopped a couple of tips off those oak trees but that's good for laughs if I have an audience. That courtyard is a church, so I really would hate to put it through one of their stained glass windows.Imagining choir practice and a plane comes crashing through bouncing off the walls.
It's a small courtyard so I have to keep a clear 100' circle and short lines, about 35' from the control handle. No problem.
Just in passing, I happen to own a license for the two Briz products "Video Joiner" and "AVI Splitter". I hadn't installed them in my latest Win7 reinstall, but your comment pushed me to try this out to see if your observations were correct. I had previously used the "joiner" program to join AVI files and it did exactly what it claimed to be able to do.
Note that there is a prerequisite for no re-compression, as stated on their product description:MPEG and AVI files with identical parameters (such as frame size, frame rate) can be joined without recompression quickly and without quality loss.So, I experimented by joining two H.264 AVI's: (1) about 142MB, and (2) about 120MB. These both are 1280x720p HD video clips, so they have the identical frame size and frame rate as required.
Sure enough, when I then pushed the "join files" function the dialog that asked me to specify the output file target location also had the "join without recompression" box checked, and all of the items below it (that could specify a new frame size, frame rate, compression codec, etc.) were all grayed out since it had pre-populated the "join without compression" checkbox. Obviously this could be done because the two AVI's satisfied the requirement that they were identical frame size/rate.
I then pushed the "join" button and the two AVI's were literally joined together with NO RE-COMPRESSION. The output file is about 262MB in size, and is absolutely the identical original two 1280x720p HD AVI clips now joined perfectly back-to-back with zero re-compression. Took about 3 seconds to do the whole thing.
I suspect your situation perhaps involved attempting to join two clips that did not have identical frame size/rate values, or perhaps you'd un-checked the "join without compression" checkbox so that the lower re-size/compress parameters now were active. Since the default new frame size is 320x240 and who knows what compression codec, this seems like the only explanation for why your output was so small and crummy. I can't imagine that the "free" version can't do this, but maybe that's how they get you to buy it.
Actually, I didn't think they offered a "free" version anyway. Were you trying it out via the 7-day trial period? Perhaps they disable the "join without compression" feature in the trial version so that you'll buy it, but it seems like unless the user could actually see that it would really work he wouldn't likely buy it anyway! So I'm puzzled about what you ran, what you did, whether you un-checked that box (if it was even available), and why you got the results you did.
Now granted, I have a paid license to the product and am not using the "free" version, so maybe that's the difference. But I can absolutely attest to the fact that this "Video Joiner" works perfectly, and exactly as advertised. The result IS a back-to-back input AVI files 1 and 2 with zero re-compression in the resulting output AVI file. And the program can do this because the two input files have identical frame size/rates.
I'm just reporting my results using this product.
I'll revisit the software and see if I missed some options. I don't recall it having the ones in your screenshot, so I bet my version may be stripped. It is a free version with no trial limit. As far as there being differences in the two clips, the movies were shot back to back with the same Samsung point and shoot camera. I set it to video mode and handed it to my friend and as far as I know he did as instructed and just pushed the Record button.
Ahh... just checked your actual original link, to the program you had called "Free Video Joiner" in the text.
Turns out we're describing two different programs.
(a) Your program is, in fact, called "Free Video Joiner".
(b) The program I was referring to is from a software company named Briz, is named "Video Joiner", and is not free. You can download it for a 7-day trial. Purchase price is $19.95.
And the program I'm talking about DOES do exactly what you want, completing in seconds. As long as the input files have the same frame size and rate, the output will NOT be re-compressed or re-sized.
Obviously the problem is not your input files. It's the fact that we were talking about two different programs.As far as there being differences in the two clips, the movies were shot back to back with the same Samsung point and shoot camera. I set it to video mode and handed it to my friend and as far as I know he did as instructed and just pushed the Record button.
Sorry for the confusion.
But I do suggest looking into the non-free Briz Video Joiner product, which though it is non-free is priced extremely reasonably and does EXACTLY what you want with an extremely simple user-interface.
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