What's Camel's MPEGJoin? Camel's MPEGJoin is a small utility to join MPEG files. It's a very simple program and all it does is join MPG files (don't try to join any other file type - it won't work). The resulting joined MPEG file created by Camel's MPEGJoin will be of the same settings as the first file in your join queue. So if you join several MPEG files, each with different settings (this is not something you want to do in general), you will end up with a joined MPEG file with the settings of the first file. NOTE: In order for you to get a "perfect" join, all files that you are joining MUST have the same specs. That is, each file that you're joining must have the same resolution, video, audio, and system MUX, etc. Camel's MPEGJoin does not verify that your files meet this criteria before (or after) joining. Programs such as Cinax's iFilmEdit do verify this and will not allow you to join files that are even slightly different. Camel's MPEGJoin will allow you to join files with different specs; however the joined MPG file may display some undesireable effects, or may not be playable at all. The only way to properly join such files is to recompress each individual file using the same specs and then join them. Camel's MPEGJoin does not provide any form of recompression. Where To Get Camel's MPEGJoin I will no longer be posting Camel's MPEGJoin in any of the newsgroups as The Profiteer has graciously offered to host Camel's MPEGJoin on his site. The URL to get the latest version of the software is http://www.newsguy.com/~theprof/. Installation Instructions Download and install the VB6 runtimes if you haven't installed them before. If you're having problems getting the VB6 runtimes from the above link, try using a link below: VB6 runtimes VB6 runtimes Unzip the contents of the zip file (CaMPGj.zip) into a temporary directory, run a good virus scanner on all extracted files, and then run the setup.exe file. New In Version 1.0.7b Nothing new in this version. I've recompiled the source with VB6 and removed the VB runtimes from the setup file. There's really no point to include these files in the setup routine as they just make the filesize a lot bigger if you already have the runtimes installed. Please note: the VB6 runtimes are required for Camel's MPEGJoin to work properly, but you only need to install them ONCE. If you've already installed them on your system or another program has installed them, you need not install them again. Version History Version 1.0.7 Fixed a bug that caused an error if a file was loaded from or written to the root directory of your hard drive. Fixed a bug in the "Save Chunk Size Setting" in the Preferences section. The checkbox would "stick" to save the chunk size setting even if you turned it off. Fixed a bug that showed up when trying to view the joined MPG file when it was saved to a directory that had spaces in it. Fixed a bug with the Remove button. When clicked, it would only remove the first selected file and not all selected files from the queue. Added a menu that pops up when you right click on a file in the queue. From this menu, you can remove a selection of files (this doesn't delete them, just takes them out of the queue), or view an individual file. Note that if you select several files and choose to remove them with this menu, all selected items will be removed. However, if you select multiple files and choose the view the files, only the first file will play. This was done intentionally as I didn't think it would be much use to fire up several instances of your MPG player to view multiple files. Made the need to uninstall previous versions of Camel's MPEGJoin unnecessary. Starting with version 1.0.7, you should be able to install Camel's MPEGJoin in the same directory as previous versions without any complications. Please note that it is always safer to uninstall any program first before installing an upgrade, and the installation routine for Camel's MPEGJoin will warn you of this. However, I have not experienced any problems upgrading from previous versions without uninstalling first (other than getting multiple entries in the Add/Remove list for Camel's MPEGJoin). If you choose to install this version (or any later versions of Camel's MPEGJoin) without uninstalling previous versions first, you should overwrite any files encountered in the installation procedure. Version 1.0.6b There's nothing new in version 1.0.6b. All this release does is fix a bug in version 1.0.6 that caused a run-time error when trying to load a web link from Camel's MPEGJoin under Windows NT. This bug did not affect any other operations in Camel's MPEGJoin. Version 1.0.6 A few things have been added/changed in version 1.0.6: Added arrow buttons so the order of source files in the queue can be changed. Clicking on the header of the filename column in the file queue will re-sort the column in alphabetical order. Added a menu item named "Useful Links". This contains web links to several sites that may be of use to us in ABME and ABM (such as where to get CODECs, multimedia utilities, and the ABME FAQ). Clicking on one of these links will automatically fire up your default web browser and load the site. Changed the manner in which files are deleted by Camel's MPEGJoin. I've taken out the checkbox in the preferences section to automatically delete files and added a button to the join window that will allow you to delete the source files. I found that there was great potential to "accidently" delete files. If you didn't have the "Confirm Delete" checkbox checked, the program would delete the files without warning. I've made "Confirm Delete" checkbox on by default in this version, and have taken out the ability to auto-delete files from the preferences section. You will be given the option to delete the sources files after a successful join, however. It should be noted that deleted files are NOT moved to the Recycle Bin, but rather, are actually deleted from your hard drive. Therefore, you will not be able to "undelete" them at a later time. Added a button that will allow you to view the joined clip with your default MPEG player. Version 1.0.5 The only significant new feature in version 1.0.5 is the addition of a preferences section. Here you can specify several preferences that will be kept between sessions. These include the following abilities: Automatically delete source files after you join them (with or without warning) Save source and target directories Save the chunk size settings between sessions Clear the queue after the files in the queue have been joined (This setting doesn't delete the files, it just clears the queue.) Version 1.0.1: Added the ability to cancel the joining operation. Added a slider to control the chunk size used to join the files. I've set the default to 40,000 bytes which seems to work pretty well on the "average" system. Setting this value higher will yield faster joins on more powerful systems, but will slow down joins on slower systems. Play around with the settings and see what works best for you :) Added a check to make sure the drive you output the joined file to actually has enough space on it before you join the files up. Fixed a minor bug in the progress bars. Version 1.0.0: First public release of Camel's MPEGJoin. Known Bugs Camel's MPEGJoin will allow you to join MPG files that are of different resolutions, bitrates, etc. You obviously don't want to do this in general, but the program will not stop you from doing so. The resulting MPG file should be playable, however, it may display some undesireable results. Disclaimer This software is beta software. Although it's been tested on Windows 95/98/NT, it may still do some strange things. I make no guarantee that it will work on your computer, nor do I take any responsibility for any damage it may cause. This software is provided AS IS; use it at YOUR OWN RISK! Contact Information If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or bug reports for Camel's MPEGJoin, post a message in alt.binaries.multimedia.utilities to "ATTN: Camel". When submitting bug reports, please include at the very least the following information: Operating system and version you're using (i.e. Windows 95 build 1111) Version of Camel's MPEGJoin you're using (i.e. 1.0.5) What error message(s) (if any) you get Any other information you think would help in tracking the error down Useful Links ABME FAQ [Thanks to The Profiteer for hosting it, and to all the others who contributed to it. It's a fine document.] SlaveTrainer's I.263 Page [Get the I.263 video CODEC with the IMC audio CODEC] Intel's I.263 CODEC [Get the I.263 video CODEC without the IMC audio CODEC (link at the bottom of the page)] DonJuan's Page [Get Peck's Power Post, the IR21 CODEC and much more] Free Agent [Free newsreader] Intel's Indeo® [Download Intel Indeo® CODECs (IV3.x, IV4.x, IV5)]

Enjoy :)