Answers.Body: <p>From <a href="http://www.ffmpeg.org/faq.html#Concatenating-using-the-concat-protocol-_0028file-level_0029" rel="nofollow">FFmpeg FAQ</a>:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>A few multimedia containers (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 PS, DV) allow to
    concatenate video by merely concatenating the files containing them.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Hence you may concatenate your multimedia files by first transcoding them to these privileged formats, then using cat command (or copy under Windows), and finally transcoding back to your format of choice.</p>
  
  <pre><code>ffmpeg -i input1.avi -qscale:v 1 intermediate1.mpg
  ffmpeg -i input2.avi -qscale:v 1 intermediate2.mpg
  cat intermediate1.mpg intermediate2.mpg &gt; intermediate_all.mpg
  ffmpeg -i intermediate_all.mpg -qscale:v 2 output.avi
  </code></pre>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2013-08-07T18:54:46.563Z
Answers.Text: If I want to keep image quality, I have to use mpeg with high bitrate which both create big intermediate files and time consuming. Which settings should I choose to save processing time?
Answers.UserDisplayName: Dzung Nguyen
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2013-08-07T04:07:12.297Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2013-08-07T05:02:00.730Z
Answers.LastEditDate: 2013-08-07T05:02:00.730Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Eugene S
Body: <p>Which video format allows concatenation simply by joining files?</p>
  
  <pre><code>cat out1.mp4 ou2.mp4 &gt;out.mp4
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>These videos are created from images using ffmpeg:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ffmpeg -loop 1 -f image2 -i image.png -s 640x480 -vcodec libx264 -t 30 -y out.mp4
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>If you can give me a running example it'd be great.</p>
  
Tags: <video><file-formats><conversion>
Title: Join videos through concatenation
UserDisplayName: Dzung Nguyen
ThreadText: # Join videos through concatenation
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2013-08-06)
  
  Which video format allows concatenation simply by joining files?
  
  ```
  cat out1.mp4 ou2.mp4 >out.mp4
  
  ```
  
  These videos are created from images using ffmpeg:
  
  ```
  ffmpeg -loop 1 -f image2 -i image.png -s 640x480 -vcodec libx264 -t 30 -y out.mp4
  
  ```
  
  If you can give me a running example it'd be great.
  
  **Tags:** video, file-formats, conversion
  
  
  ---
  
  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2013-08-07. Score: 0 | Accepted answer
  
  From [FFmpeg FAQ](http://www.ffmpeg.org/faq.html#Concatenating-using-the-concat-protocol-_0028file-level_0029):
  
  > A few multimedia containers (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 PS, DV) allow to
  > concatenate video by merely concatenating the files containing them.
  
  Hence you may concatenate your multimedia files by first transcoding them to these privileged formats, then using cat command (or copy under Windows), and finally transcoding back to your format of choice.
  
  ```
  ffmpeg -i input1.avi -qscale:v 1 intermediate1.mpg
  ffmpeg -i input2.avi -qscale:v 1 intermediate2.mpg
  cat intermediate1.mpg intermediate2.mpg > intermediate_all.mpg
  ffmpeg -i intermediate_all.mpg -qscale:v 2 output.avi
  
  ```
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_0**: If I want to keep image quality, I have to use mpeg with high bitrate which both create big intermediate files and time consuming. Which settings should I choose to save processing time?  
  
  ---
  
  