What's a good program for combining more than one .avi into one for encoding? I'd hate to loose any quality...

VirtualDub. Open part 1 & append part2. When saving use direct stream copy, this will keep the quality exactly as it was.

Ditto

ok, I got Virtual Dub and loaded and appended like you said, but I get an error, "No Audio Decompressor could be found to decompress the source audio format. (source format tag: 2000)"
The movie plays fine in my realplayer, so I know I have the codecs, it's like Virtual Dub can't find it AND it won't let me set compression under the audio menu, it's greyed out.

Any suggestions?

What would be the final output format of the joined files?

@Sky BlueShoes
I actually use VirtualDubMod which does things slightly differently to the version I suggested. It might be better.
Also get Gspot &/or Avicodec. Both these will give you details of the video & audio codecs used by the avi file & show what is installed. They are most useful when dealing with video files.
Avicodec will help you find any missing codecs. But what ever you do don't install any of the codec packs, just get the ones you need.

@Alex Thyl
The format would be as the input files (AVI).

Hmm, try another version of VirtualDub, like AC3, or MP3 and Video Freeze, or VDub MPEG2, or MOD? Can you save out a WAV file if you load one at a time? BTW, in Direct Stream Copy Mode, compression WILL be grayed out, to access it, you need Full Processing Mode. I know, VirtualDub is kinda counter-intuitive when first learning how to use it. If you go Full Processing Mode and recompress, you will take a quality hit.

How about loading each file in turn, and going to File ->File Information. Then tell us the particulars of each file. VDub does not like VBR mp3, for instance, and may refuse to do Direct Stream Copy.

If this is to be converted to MPEG2, it's not absolutely essential to join the files. They could be converted separately and authored together afterwards.

Good luck.

Ok the .avi is in three files...

File #1:
640x384 25.0fps
XVid MPEG-4 Codec
Audio 48000 Hz 320 kbps
Audio Compression Unknown (tag 2000)

File #2:
Same

File #3:
Same

I used AVICodec to see which codec it uses and it reported XVID MPEG-4 and
AC3 DVM

I'm going to try VDubMod but if y'all see something in this post that could help me, I'd 'preciate it

Ok, VDubMod doesn't even have an audio menu, nor the option to save as .wav, so I don't see how it will work...the AVICodec took me to a website for AC3, but after installing it I still got the same error on Vdub

To get a WAV file in VDubMod, go to Streams -> Stream List. Dunno what codec you got, but this is useful:

http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=AC3_Filter

If you can get VDub to recognize your audio, then no need to extract, append and save as Direct Stream Copy.

Good luck.

That is the codec I got and I'm still getting the same error....oh well, I'll try another route, like a differnt .avi

Okay, you're not the first one to have this problem.

Look here:

http://forum.digital-digest.com/arch...p/t-20487.html

And here:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=133561

Just because you have an AC3 codec doesn't mean you're set. Where did you get it? Its title?

For my purposes, AC3Filter is adequate, it's an excellent, widely compatible Direct Show filter. Now if that doesn't do it for this project, you could get AC3-ACM, a decompressor that works very well with VirtualDub. Then there's AC3Fix, which can correct bad frames within AC3 files. All free, Google for them.

This could be any number of things, which is one reason I don't waste my time with downloaded AVIs. In one of the above links, Chickenman has a couple possible fixes for you. Good luck.

I do have my cpu overclocked but never had a problem with it and I run temp alarms on it too, so I don't think it's my system. Now I do have a codec package installed, I think it's ffdshow, but every other avi I've encoded/transcoded has worked fine, just this one and I notice that the bitrate on the audio is enormously higher than the others (320kbps compared to around 192kbps) and I haven't seen anything about the AC3 DVM codec anywhere, must be an off the wall AC3...

VD can not handle AC3 audio streams. Give nandub a try.

VirtualDubMod has no problems with AC3 audio. I join avi files with AC3 on a regular basis. It allows the stream to be demuxed or saved as wav.

I was referring to the original version of VD.