how to join MPEG -1 or MPEG 2 without sacrificing quality?

Hello, I need some help- my camera gets mpeg-1 video clips. then I use Easy Cd Creator 5 Platinium to join the clips as VCD (mpeg) file and see them on my dvd player. But the Quality is not the same and I hate that. I can also see the clips one by one by just writing them to a cd (I have a plasma tv) with the initial better quality and I hate that too. So, I would like to know how can I join mpeg-1 without sacrificing quality and also use some transitions between the clips because I found some softs eg easy mpeg joiner that don't offer transitions and then the whole thing becomes a little stupid. Thanks !

 

I don't know if I understood well your question. If you don't re-encode the MPEGs, there's no quality loss in joining two or more movies.
For instance, by doing in TMPGenc File___MPEG tools___Merge & Cut (type: mpeg-1 Video-CD or, if you have the plus version, you can choose also "mpeg-2 Video-CD", if the input movies are mpeg-2 and you don't have to re-encode them) you create a new movie which is simply the merge of 1 and 2.
The quality loss happens only if the movies are re-encoded a second time (and this is NOT done by TMPGenc, provided the two movies are of the same type)!

 

thanks a lot .. but the quality forsure changes as I compare the new merged video with the clips themselves although I don't recode them. I thought that was probably caused by roxio. and sorry for my ignorance, what is TMPGenc File? thx

 

It is not uncommon. Lots of movie software tends to encode the movies even if it's not necessary... for instance, Nero doesn't put multiple VCD movies into a DVD, it tries to encode a VCD movie in DVD form (therefore, losing room in the disc without gaining any quality, since garbage in = garbage out).

TMPGenc is THE movie encoder. As long as you just need it to encode MPEG-1 files, it's free. You need to purchase the 'Plus' version only if you need to load MPEG-2 (DVD and SVCD) files.
Look at the http://www.afterdawn.com/software/ page and study some tutorial in http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/ .
Ah, TMPGenc 2.5 is 'free', TMPGenc 3 Xpress, instead, costs, therefore if you just want to encode mpeg-1 files you might prefer to stick to the 2.5 version.

 

Not trying to start a war here, but tmpgenc is not THE encoder. It just happens to be the most marketed and talked about. There are better, faster, ones out there, for about the same money.

For alibi123's problem, I would suggest some simple authoring application, that may not have transitions and stuff, but will take a native VCD mpeg and put it on DVD "as-is".
DVDAuthorGUI, and GUIForDVDAuthor are two free options. DVDLab will do it, complete with transitions, but there's a steep learning curve. I think that even ReJig might work on VCD, but I haven't got one here to test.

 

After hrs of searching the internet I found MPEG-VCR from Womble which I think it's very good. I tried and I'm really satisfied. I can cut, join, use transitions and no quality deterioration at all becuase this software doesn't re-encode. and it's really really -fast. I loved it. they have also another soft they appraised more -MPEG Video Wizard-but I haven't tried it.

 

Yes "Womble Mpeg2VCR" is a Great Mpeg editor for doing Basic Editing and Joining but for Advanced editing with Transitions and effects and Filters then "Womble Mpeg Video WiZard 2003" is the Best and it is Very easy to use....

Cheers

 

Yes, probably it's also our responsibility, but there are more tutorials (and more plugins like DVD2AVI) for TMPGenc than for the other applications...

 

may be , but from what I've seen up to know, and believe me... I've tried more than 10 different softwares, I found Womble Media Wizard the best up to know - i made videos that are exactly as taken with my camera.