Thanks - I'll look into it.

If you have VV there is no reason not to use it, I'm not knocking VirtualDub but there would be no upside to using it over VV. As they are already AVIs joing them together does not require rendering and hence there will be no quality loss.

I can't see how they can be joined withoput rendering them out as you can only save the joined files as VEG or EDL.

If the AVI files are all the same uncompressed or DV format, and you render to the same format, then Vegas won't render them while doing a Render As. It simply copies the frames bit for bit instead of rendering.

If any of the files are a different format, or if you try rendering uncompressed to DV or DV to uncompressed, then there will be a rendering involved. I would think this would have to be the case with Virtual dub too; you can't just paste avi files of different formats together into a single file. *

* well, i suppose you could, but i wouldn't expect any media player to be able to handle the resulting mess!

I've seen progs that join MPEGs without rendering, though and that's what made me ask.

Thanks for all the advice. I'll do it in V4 and render to uncompressed AVI.

Cheers

Not to knock Vegas, but I've found VirtualDub to be better for joining AVI's without recompression. AFAIK, Vegas won't recompress DV but will recompress everything else. VirtualDub is more flexible in that regard. You still can't join two AVI's that use different codecs though.

Honestly, I think VirtualDub is a must have program to be used in conjunction with Vegas. Besides, you can use VirtualDub filters in Vegas if you use Satish's plugin.

I cannot image how anything could join two AVIs that used different codecs or formats without recompression. The header in the file must be where the codec info is stored so if you could just append the data onto the first file its not going to play very well.

From what I've gleaned so far VV may do more than is absolutely necessary when joining two mpg files but at least the way it does it is 100% safe. Better that than finding out the hard way that not all decoders will still play the stitched together file.

DiscDude -- I'm it total agreement. VirtualDub is one of my most treasured filtering/editing tools. Some of it capabilities are still unmatched by anything on the market today.

To answer Mavericks question:
I would use Virtual dub for joining avi's, for it's sheer speed and simplicity. Virtualdub can join like formated files at well over 100fps, without reencoding. My system averages 140fps. It depends heavily on the speed of your hdd.

However you will run into problems joining avi's when they are of a different codec, different framerate, or different resolution. Virtual dub just won't do it without reencoding. If your not too familar with VD, then it might be better to let VV do the reencoding/joining.

Now if the avi's are all DV format, then virtualdub will have no problem joining them. Additionally, Since every frame in DV is a "Keyframe", there's no worries about virtualdub losing audio sync, which can happen with some compression formats if you don't remember to edit only at the keyframes.

jeffy82@aol.com