Joining or Fusing two .rm or .wmv files?

[foxestacado.livejournal.com]

I am at my wit's end. I am using Adobe Premiere Pro 7, and I created a 03:40 minute video using a mixture of XVID and DivX encoded clips. These days I prefer to compress my clips using XVID. However, my program has a problem with (apparently) the XVID clips, and will change them into a blank screen. This problem is easily fixed by restarting the program, since it doesn't start doing it until about 15 minutes after I start using the program.

However, now I am trying to finalize my video, and I've tried just about every encoding format, and always at around 02:54 minutes, the screen starts turning blank.

So now I'm thinking, what if I just cut my video in half, and encode the two parts separately, and then fuse them together using some kind of software? Any ideas on software that can "join" or "fuse" high quality .wmv or .rm files? Thanks in advance.

Comments

[foxestacado.livejournal.com]

no, I'm making the .wmv's using Adobe Premiere 7.

[foxestacado.livejournal.com]

your Premiere doesn't let you import DivX/XVID clips? Apparently Premiere has a lot of trouble with DivX/XVID clips, but I was able to use them by restarting my program every 20 mins or so. It's a pain in the ass, but it works. The problem now is finalizing. I'll try what you suggested :)

[foxestacado.livejournal.com]

yeah, it exports, but so far, I see the video quality is vastly diminished. Hmm, I wonder if Premiere supports importing in .rm ?

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

If you can get Premiere to make you both halves, you can just import the .avi's or .wmv's back into Premiere into a new sequence in the same project. Or a new project if you'd like. The re-export as a whole. It should work fine when they aren't XviD. XviD and Divx are really unreliable with Premiere.

[foxestacado.livejournal.com]

I never knew XVID and DivX were unreliable in Premiere. Oh, I never thought about re-importing the sequences back into Premiere. I thought about using Windows Movie Maker to encode the sequences if I break it down into a half or a third.

I'm worried about reduction in quality. I'm encoding my video now in 1/3rds in the WMM 9 NSTC 1024 K with a resize of 640x480.

Thank you, I'll try that :)

[zoerayne]

Two things:

1. Export the pieces as a plain .avi, then re-import and export in your chosen format.

2. If you're worried about quality reduction, I'd recommend trying to get your source in another (less lossy) format, because taking a compressed file (e.g., divx or xvid), then compressing it again (especially in something nasty like .wmv) is going to give you ugly results.

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

Well, you can take pretty XviD files and still export them to a decent looking WMV, depending on the settings you use. Most of the TV eps out there to download these days look pretty nice, and as long as they don't get compressed again before being exported to a final WMV, they do alright in my experience.

But yeah, like Zoe said, if you have the choice to keep the source as something else, DVD quality for example, that's definitely preferable to something more compressed.

[foxestacado.livejournal.com]

I agree. I'm testing out your suggestions, and I've already encoded about 2/3 of the video in parts.

I've never had really any degradation in quality by taking a video that is already encoded in DivX or just plain .avi and re-compressing in XVID, then encoding in .wmv after putting together a music video. I find what mainly affects the finalization of the video is choosing a higher bitrate, such as 512 or 1024

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it sucks, but life is easier if you can find another codec that fits your needs. :] Or you can use Avisynth to trick Premiere into using the XviD files. It's a nice fix, but requires a little more learning than just finding a codec that works. It can save you time in the end though, if don't care to make lots of small clips to begin with.

If you're worried about reducing the quality of the exports (to bring back into Premiere), just export them as uncompressed AVIs instead. Be about 4 GB for a vid of that length and resolution, but you won't need to keep the files for very long. Or you can zip them and burn them to CD/DVD in case you want to alter them later.

Then bring the AVIs back into Premiere and export to WMV. Exporting to AVI also tends to be a little more stable in my experience than the Media Encoder. Should just be able to choose Export "Movie" instead of Media Encoder. Hope this all helps. :]

[fahrbotdrusilla]

will that work for vegas too?

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

Avisynth, or the re-importing/exporting bit?

[fahrbotdrusilla]

avisynth, I have had issues with trying to use xvid (all my clips are in this format) in Vegas, I changed codecs and my dvd to avi converter stopped working... so I don't want to change codecs again.

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

There's an excellent guide to using Avisynth put together by absolut3destiny. He does mention that there is a plugin to use it with Vegas, but since he uses Premiere, he doesn't offer specific tips. Here's a link to the page he mentions it, and the Guide index. The rest of the guide would help sort out Avisynth if the plugin works for you.

If it does, getting the clips in isn't too complicated, but there are some considerations to using Avisynth with Premiere--I'm guessing it's probably the same with Vegas, I'm just not sure what they would specifically be in that case.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/videogetbmeth2.html

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/index.html

[fahrbotdrusilla]

thank you I will look into that :)

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

I hope it works out. I'm certainly attached to it at this point. :D

[foxestacado.livejournal.com]

thanks for those additional links. I will check them out :)

[foxestacado.livejournal.com]

I really want to try your avisynth trick. But I'm a little wary of using Avisynth for hundreds of clips per music video. I tend to use 150 clips (or more) per 3 minute music video, with about a couple dozen clips that I test in the music video, and then decide to discard.

I make a lot of small clips (i.e. between 2 seconds and 2 minutes long).

Thanks for all your sound advice. It's really a great help. Since I want to continue working in Premiere, I want to really play around with finding another codec or try tricking Premiere with Avisynth.

I tried the method of exporting to movie instead of Media Encoder, and I get files that are 800 MB or larger. The quality is great, but the file size is too large.

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

That's exactly how I used to use clips too. Then I started to use the Monitor window in Premiere to easily take small sections from larger clips and bring them to the timeline. Then, when vidding from DVDs for example, I can put a couple hours worth of ripped chapters into one avisynth .avs file, and just scroll through to get the clips I want. Have to have some clue of what I'm looking for though. Too many .avs files and Premiere does get pissy. ;]

Anyway, if that's not terribly appealing, then I'd start checking out other codec options. Maybe look into saving up for more harddrive space so that you could use one of the lossless codecs. They compress more than an uncompressed AVI, but they're still large.

I tried the method of exporting to movie instead of Media Encoder, and I get files that are 800 MB or larger. The quality is great, but the file size is too large.

If you find a codec that you like, that would be where you would adjust the settings to choose it. I was suggesting it more as a stop-gap solution. If you have the room to store the large files of your final video temporarily, it's a way to reassemble projects that don't want to render in one go, or to export them to Xvid from something like Virtual Dub, which handles that particular export much better than Premiere.

[foxestacado.livejournal.com]

thank you for the suggestions. I will try exporting them to XVID next time instead, since having to deal with this nightmare scenario with Premiere. God, I can't thank you enough for the amount of help you've given me. Great tips all around. I am memorying this for the future. Thank you so much [worships]

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

Heh, I haven't done anything that helpful, just pointing towards a few things. Which other people were happy to do for me when I started out with these programs. :] If you find out I was too vague about anything later, just let me know.

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

Here's something you can try.

Divx and Xvid are very very similar codecs and each can decode the other's content if given the chance.

If Premiere likes your divx clips and not your xvid clips you may be able to make Premiere think your xvid clips are actually divx clips.

To do this, you will need a program to change the FourCC of the avi file - you can get one here http://www.divx-digest.com/software/avifourcc.html

The fourcc is a label on the file that tells software what codec to use to interpret the footage.

Backup one clip that you know is a problem, then change the fourcc on the one that premiere will read from XVID to DIVX. In fact, you could load one of your divx clips and see exactly what codes they use and copy them for your xvid clips.

To see if the new clip works, reload your premiere project with the new clip in place and try it. If it solves the problem then rinse and repeat for all your xvid clips.

[foxestacado.livejournal.com]

thanks! That sounds like a great idea, but if I have too many clips, it might be a pain in the ass to change the FourCC of the .avi files. But I think it'd be very helpful for that rare spattering of clips that don't work. I've made music videos where every clip works great, except the one odd clip that just refuses to be imported. I'm memorying this so I'll have an alternative to re-encoding/compressing.

[river-boat.livejournal.com]

Have you thought about exporting the two halves as movies (resulting in huge avi files, but without any loss in quality) then importing the movie files back into Premiere and encoding them as one wmv/rm file from there? Thats what I've done in the past when Premiere Pro refused to encode a whole timeline in one go. It was an easy fix and I didn't lose any quality.

[foxestacado.livejournal.com]

thank you, I didn't think about that, but I'll definitely keep that in mind for my next music video. (This one's finished, it's located at http://www.livejournal.com/users/foxestacado/3305.html). What I did was encode every part in ultra high quality WMM (version 9 NSTC 1024 K download with a high quality resize of 640x480 pixels), and then reassembled it (which was a pain in the ass too) in a new project.