Joining mp4 files to make One Movie

hello wattage

can you please inform us what software you have on your computer? iMovie would do the job for you, however it requires converting the movie - which means loss in quality (minimal, if you do it right).

QuickTime 7 cetainly can do it for you if you know what you are doing, and can be exprted in a lossy format, but is harder to use.

wattage said:

Just got the basics, quicktime, handbrake, iMovie...no professional suites for video editing. I tried using Quicktime 7 and scrubbing to end of first song then dragging second song in but it mixed the files.

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rather frustrating to use QT7 then. i would suggest doing it in iMovie, worth a shot.

wattage said:

ummm. HOW? iMovie doesn't recognize mp4 files.

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MPEG4 part 10 is the codec that apple does best, you should be able to import them straight into iMovie.

if not - open them in QT7 and export them as .dv, iMovie can read those.

wattage said:

I have individual mp4 files from a concert and want to join them seamlessly to make a concert DVD. I read about using Quicktime 7 and tried that but the files were getting split and it just didn't work. Anyone have a program or series of steps to convert and combine mp4 files??

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When you say "seamlessly" do the videos actually flow together so that if you do butt them up against each other they play seamlessly, or do you need to add a transition between them so the viewer doesn't really notice the change?

martinX said:

When you say "seamlessly" do the videos actually flow together so that if you do butt them up against each other they play seamlessly, or do you need to add a transition between them so the viewer doesn't really notice the change?

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he means they are in the same file, and will straight away jump to the next movie/title.

One thing you can do is to convert the two mp4 files into DV (as has been suggested) using something like ffmpegx or MPEG Streamclip. ffmpegx is freely available, but requires a bit of simple voodoo to install (you have to install three separate libraries) and isn't all that user-friendly. MPEG Streamclip is free and is very easy to use. It's been a while since I've needed it for anything like this, but I think you may have to install the Apple MPEG-2 component in order to do what you need. That can be purchased and downloaded from the Apple store website. I think it's $20.

Convert each file to DV and then import into iMovie, edit and trim as you like, and then send to iDVD to author a disc. That's the "simple" way. Transcoding will degrade the picture quality somewhat, which may or may not be noticeable.

If you don't care about having a playable CD and will just be watching this on a computer or streaming to a TV, then you can use Quicktime 7 Pro to join the two files. All you do is open up one of them, select all, copy, and then open up the second clip and put the playhead where you want to insert the material and paste. Then save as a self-contained movie and you are all done. Picture quality won't change at all, and you'll now have one, full-length file.

Personally, unless you have a strong desire or a pressing need to play the disc on a DVD player, I'd go with the second option. It's much easier, much faster, and won't degrade the picture quality at all.

I've found the easiest way of doing it, just use an older version of the regular free QuickTime 7.0+ which gives you the ability to just drag and drop files on top of each other in sequence and it creates a perfect, merged video for you. Ofcourse Apple took this feature away on their later updates as usual to force people to buy the Pro version, but you don't need to buy it. QuickTime 7.0+ also gives alot of other useful features too, all taken away from users in upgrades! upgrades! upgrades!

http://www.macyourself.com/2009/03/...eo-files-using-the-free-version-of-quicktime/