Merging 2 M4Vs

[ghall]

So I'm in the process of ripping my DVDs (don't worry, they're my own disks, I just want to have copies of them in iTunes for convenience), and I'm on my copies of The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition.

For those who don't know, each of the 3 extended films are on 2 disks. I had to rip both halves of each film separately, resulting in 2 separate files for each movie. What I want is to merge each movie into it's own file.

The only problem with this is that at the end of each movie's part 1, there are a few frames of black. When they're merged, it creates a very jarring break where I would like the last scene of part 1 to flow right into the first scene of part 2. I'm trying to do it in Quicktime X (I can't use iMovie because I want to preserve the aspect ratio), but it won't let me shave off a couple frames (or at the very least I don't know how to).

Is there any other solution? Am I missing something? I'd prefer to re-encode as little as possible because the video has already been compressed enough (used my ripping software's iTunes preset).

Also, not a requirement, but it would be nice to preserve the chapter markers.

Thanks.

 

[jackrv]

Without bringing it into a proper editing program, I'm not sure there is a way. Are you ripping with Handbrake? Unfortunately AFAIK that only lets you rip to MP4 or MKV.

In order to either cut out the black (I know the parts you are talking about), you will need to trim the black part out. iMovie can do this for free, but you will have to re-encode again for final output.

If anyone knows of a ripper that can rip to Apple Intermediate Codec directly, that could save some quality when re-encoding it to M4V after the cut. Not sure how a ripped M4V > AIC > back to M4V would do.

 

[Sedulous]

So I'm in the process of ripping my DVDs (don't worry, they're my own disks, I just want to have copies of them in iTunes for convenience), and I'm on my copies of The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition.

For those who don't know, each of the 3 extended films are on 2 disks. I had to rip both halves of each film separately, resulting in 2 separate files for each movie. What I want is to merge each movie into it's own file.

The only problem with this is that at the end of each movie's part 1, there are a few frames of black. When they're merged, it creates a very jarring break where I would like the last scene of part 1 to flow right into the first scene of part 2. I'm trying to do it in Quicktime X (I can't use iMovie because I want to preserve the aspect ratio), but it won't let me shave off a couple frames (or at the very least I don't know how to).

Is there any other solution? Am I missing something? I'd prefer to re-encode as little as possible because the video has already been compressed enough (used my ripping software's iTunes preset).

Also, not a requirement, but it would be nice to preserve the chapter markers.

Thanks.

You can use MP4tools to extract a specific fragment/clip from the mp4 file(s) and then merge them all together again without re-encoding. Just make sure they are all same frame size, same audio, and do not contain chapters (you can add chapters after you merge but not before).

 

[ghall]

You can use MP4tools to extract a specific fragment/clip from the mp4 file(s) and then merge them all together again without re-encoding. Just make sure they are all same frame size, same audio, and do not contain chapters (you can add chapters after you merge but not before).

Thanks. Exactly what I was looking for.

 

[Sedulous]

Thanks. Exactly what I was looking for.

Glad to help.

 

[ghall]

Ok, I finally had some time to try the software out. I can't figure out how to join 2 videos. I checked the online documentation and it wasn't very helpful.