how to combine or concatenate two video files with ffmpeg?

Question

I have tried to concatenate 2 video files (avi) into one sigle video:

cat input1.avi input2.avi | ffmpeg -f avi -i - -vcodec copy -acodec copy final.avi

.. but this does not concatenate the videos. The duration of the final video is not the sum of the input videos.

How can this be done correctly?

Answer 1

Try using mencoder:

$ mencoder -ovc lavc start.avi end.avi -o complete.avi

I know it isn't using ffmpeg, but it definitely works.

Using cat won't likely work with avi files because information is stored in the opening bytes of an avi. Thus cat simply shunts the two binary files together, leaving a broken bit in the middle and incorrect metadata at the start.

Answer 2

This: http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/ might help you. If you want to merge the files, use the ready software, if you want to learn how to do it, use the source.