Merge AVI-files without recoding in Mac OS X Lion

Is there a (at best free) solution to merge AVI-Files in Mac OS X Lion without the need to recode them? (Until Snow Leopard I used D-Vision 3, which won't run on Lion because it's PPC.)

Chris

Posted 2011-08-03T19:15:59.163

Reputation: 303

By "merge", do you mean combine in sequence? – Mechanical snail – 2011-08-03T20:19:09.750

1Also, we need to know the video format (motion JPEG? H.264?) to know whether this is possible. – Mechanical snail – 2011-08-03T20:19:55.663

@Mechanical: Yes, by merge I mean join them seamlessly in sequence. We can take as granted, that all files share the same framerate, codec and resolution. Used codec is mainly following the MPEG-4 standard such as Xvid. In fact it is possible as it was before Lion as well as it is with Windows. I'm looking for a tool that also runs on Lion. – Chris – 2011-08-03T22:43:05.107

1In general, ffmpeg the tool for this. – Mechanical snail – 2011-08-03T22:49:40.953

I started the bounty only because @w00t's answer is godsend — it probably saved me few $/€'s worth of actual money; and it would had saved a lot of time & effort if I just had stumbled on it earlier…

– Jari Keinänen – 2011-08-31T12:45:44.287

Answers

To make your copy of avidemux2.app work, simply open the application bundle (show package contents in finder) and remove the files libxml.2.dylib and libiconv.2.dylib from the Contents/Resources/lib folder.

This will make avidemux2 use the versions that ship with Lion and which seem to work just fine.

w00t

Posted 2011-08-03T19:15:59.163

Reputation: 811

1Thanks, good information. Did not know I could delete them instead of replacing them. – Chris – 2011-08-13T22:49:40.653

This works for me:

cat part1.avi part2.avi part3.avi > tmp.avi && mencoder -forceidx -oac copy -ovc copy tmp.avi -o output.avi && rm -f tmp.avi

Then output.avi should not only have the whole content but also have the indexes recalculated so the whole movie plays.

rich

Posted 2011-08-03T19:15:59.163

Reputation: 1 071

Since mencoder can take multiple input arguments, I'm not sure why you would need to cat the files. – Kalle – 2015-06-04T22:35:32.757

1Genius. And worked for me as well. – peelman – 2012-12-06T03:51:04.240

1NB: The command line is quite long so be careful when copying it. – Umar Farooq Khawaja – 2013-03-09T10:59:11.987

1Worked like a charm! Excellent answer. – Umar Farooq Khawaja – 2013-03-09T11:15:57.090

2-bash: mencoder: command not found. Download ffmpegXbinaries20060307.zip unzip and then copy mencoder to /usr/local/bin and then above works wonderful. THANKS! – westondeboer – 2013-06-29T17:03:36.237

2@westondeboer If you've got macports installed, sudo port install mplayer – Joel Mellon – 2013-09-05T01:29:35.390

Avidemux is an open source tool for editing/combining videos, and there is a Mac port:

http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/

Bryan Agee

Posted 2011-08-03T19:15:59.163

Reputation: 367

Thanks. Avidemux does not support Lion at the moment. Avidemux uses a lion-incompatible version of the library libiconv.2.dylib. I got it working by replacing the library with a patched version from GnuCash: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=192432

– Chris – 2011-08-05T10:44:16.517

Try this Lion-compatible Version of D-Vision 3: D-Vision 3 (Intel)

fheusel

Posted 2011-08-03T19:15:59.163

Reputation: 19

1Where did you get this version from? I'm not that comfortable with downloading programs from unknown sources. – Chris – 2011-08-12T17:49:22.553

Actually the author's site has a universal binary: http://www.objectifmac.com/dvision.php

– w00t – 2011-08-13T15:01:17.450

@w00t: You're right. In fact the D-Vision main app works on Lion, while joining AVIs with D-Vision does not. You can start it, select the tool to join AVIs, select your AVI-files and start the task. I checked "delete source files when task is finished" (as always) and then I got the Rosetta-error and also lost my source-files. – Chris – 2011-08-13T22:48:43.150

@Chris: actually I just copied the universal-binary-files from the newest D-Vision 4 beta into the old D-Vision 3 App-Bundle.

– fheusel – 2011-08-18T07:31:04.237

D-Vision will work with OS X Lion. Just use mencoder and not the default avimerge.

smokedoggz89

Posted 2011-08-03T19:15:59.163

Reputation: 11

Download newest version of ffmpegX.
Right click “Show Package Contents”
Copy avimerge located in Contents > Resources > avimerge.
Paste the avimerge file in the same location within D-Vision.app file. To do this, right click “Show Package Contents” at the "D-vision.app" icon and paste it in "Contents > Resources".

D-Vision will then work a treat in Lion OS X.

Beelzebubs

Posted 2011-08-03T19:15:59.163

Reputation: 11

Here is a way that requires absolutely no additional software. If you have OS X, you can do this. Open Terminal and do this:

cat /path/to/part1.avi /path/to/part2.avi > /path/to/where/you/want/whole.avi

bernk

Posted 2011-08-03T19:15:59.163

Reputation: 225

Unfortunately, it doesn't work for me. – rich – 2012-12-02T14:19:31.563

What do you mean by "it doesn't work"? You'll have to be more specific if you want some help. – bernk – 2012-12-04T09:36:30.397

This is great accept it doesn't work for me either.... I end up with only the first video in the output file (Mountain Lion) – neildeadman – 2013-02-01T21:14:36.017

1This would probably only work for files that don't require any kind of header. To my knowledge, .avi files have a header so basically, this would only append the 2nd .avi file to the end of the first but the header information won't be there for it to be played. – Umar Farooq Khawaja – 2013-03-09T10:16:27.047