Hello all - newbie here. What is the best way of linking together a number of AVI format video files with no or minimal loss of quality.(Preferably keeping the format as AVI). I'm not looking to do any editing: I just want to put the files together so that I get a continuous movie.

I have access to Adobe Premiere Elements 3 and Windows Movie Maker 2. My efforts with these have not been entirely successful. I can see a loss of quality. I feel it should be possible, especially with Premiere, to achieve a lossless result.

All hints and tips gratefully received.

[redsox_mark]

".avi" is a "container", or wrapper - i.e. there can be lots of different formats/codecs inside.

If it is DV .avi, then any decent editor (like PE3) should "smart render", where it only re-renders bits which have been changed. If you are connecting two DV .avi files together with no edits then there should be no re-rendering and no quality loss.

If the .avi files contain some highly compressed format, then any edit (even just appending) will likely cause it to be re-rendered; it also depends on what format you are rendering to.

[senu]

I had explained what Mark has just stated but it was gobbled up in cyberspace
AVI is not a "format"

To reiterate. DV AVi from say a MiniDV camcorder will join up without any need to reeencode any part that dont need it.

It is however possible that your "avi"s are derived from mpeg4.,divx, xvid or even mjpeg files
These compressed files are generally going to lose PQ as they are meant to be viewed, not editable files as such

As such , they may derive from differnt codecs, and in joining them you would be reeencoding and this is never "lossless".
If they are all divx files, it might be possible to use products like Dr Divx or DIVX pro to Edit" them with minimum quality loss

Many thanks for these helpful replies!

The AVI files I am seeking to link are Motion-JPEG. Does this mean there's no hope of linking them losslessly?

Even if so, I'd still appreciate any tips for minimising the loss using (say) PE3.

Any offers please?

[senu]

Originally Posted by Viviners

Any offers please?

What else do you have?.. If you convert the mjpeg files to DV AVI join them up then out put them to ..? there is no guarantee of quality. The problem is that the mjpegs are already so compressed that any manipulation is not often welcome.
If you want to convert them and need something to help you do it give me a PM but Having done what you are trying to do now before , Im not sure how you can avoid quality loss

[alpine101]

I would have thought VirtualDub should be able to join these AVI's together when it's set to "Direct Stream Copy", assuming they're all the same format!.

I do have VirtualDub. I'll give that a try.