Any way to stick AVCHD files together?

Sebaz wrote on 10/23/2011, 1:49 PM

I wanted to test Vegas 11 so I'm editing a simple project which consists of a wedding rehearsal. However, I had not used the Vegas Device Explorer to import these files, I just copied the AVCHD structure onto the hard drive because normally I edit in Edius, which recognizes that two or more files sometimes are one take and when I drag the first file on the timeline, all the files that are part of that take act as one event. But Vegas apparently only does that when importing using the Device Explorer, but when I use the files directly from the AVCHD structure, they act as separate events, with the problem that at the end of each event there's a small portion of missing audio, so it's useless.

So without having to copy the structure onto a card and import it using Vegas, is there another way to copy them together as one file?

Comments

dalemccl wrote on 10/23/2011, 4:06 PM

If I understand what you want to do, you can do it in a couple ways. This is from notes I made and saved after searching the internet for an answer to the same question. The Windows CMD line method works with any file, but for joining my .mts files that my camcorder split up because of its 2GB limit, I usually use txmuxer because typing the correct syntax of the Windows CMD string is tedious.
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How to join (combine) files in Windows such as long video files broken up by a camcorder into to 2 GB segments.

1. In Windows: click Start >> Run.
2. Type CMD and press Enter. This will open the command prompt.
3. In the command prompt, type:

copy /b "D:\FirstClip.mpg" + "D:\SecondClip.mpg" "D:\FullMovie.mpg"

where FirstClip.mpg and SecondClip.mpg are the video files to join and FullMovie.mpg is the resultant combined file.
You can specify any number of files to join so long as each is included in the command with an additional + string
4. Press enter and the files will be joined. It takes Windows quite a while to do it if the files are large.

OR use tsMuxer if dealing with the file types it handles. To join AVCHD files from a camcorder, click "Add" to browse for the first file, then click "Join "to browse for each additional file. Select the little button for m2ts muxing and provide a
output file name and path in the box below. Click "Start Muxing". It does not re-render.

Sebaz wrote on 10/23/2011, 5:49 PM

Homer Simpson Doh! for me, how did I forget about TS Muxer? I use that program all the time for other stuff. Thanks!

hazydave wrote on 10/23/2011, 10:04 PM

You don't really need TSMuxer for AVCHD files that are split by most cameras. Well, really any camera.

If yours works like my Panasonic, it will break the files at exactly 4GiB. That'll happen right smack in the middle of frame, GOP, and MPEG-2 TS packet -- thus the audio glitch.

What you want to do with these is concatenate them. I'm not entirely sure how TSMuxer will deal with interrupted packet between files, but the dumb way always works.

The interesting is that, even if your camera did break the stream at a packet boundary, this would still work. The Transport Stream really is a stream.. there's no global header. So "gluing" them together just works. I usually "cat" them together in a cygwin shell, but there's also a WIndows shell extension that adds concat and split as a desktop extension -- does save some time. Also useful if you have to put >4GB video files onto some stupid FAT32 volume for some reason.

Sebaz wrote on 10/23/2011, 10:06 PM

Not for me. My Sony HDR-AX2000 makes 2 GB files, and when put together on the Vegas timeline, the video continues fine, but the audio goes silent the last half second of each file. Joining them with TS Muxer worked perfectly.

megabit wrote on 10/24/2011, 1:26 AM

With Sony AVCHD clips/files, the free Content Management Utility that comes with FS100 does that. You can download it from Sony web site.

Piotr

Sebaz wrote on 10/24/2011, 9:49 AM

I know, it's just that usually I don't use it because with Edius I don't need to. I just drag the whole AVCHD structure and Edius recognizes the takes that are across multiple files. I wasn't planning on editing in Vegas, but then 11 came out, so I wanted to test it by editing the rehearsal of a wedding.