I finally have enough storage with my freshly built WHS 2011 server to re-attempt (for the umpteenth time) making my 100+ hours of home video easily accessible from any computer on the network.
Over the years, I've used three different camcorders to take home video: Sharp 8mm, Canon MiniDV and Canon HD (tape-based). A long while back, I converted all the tapes I had to their native digital filetypes using one of the Canon camcorder's built-in capabilitiies (AVI files for the 8mm and MiniDV, and M2T files for the HD content). But playing that digital media never worked well in my network, and my attempts at transcoding them into something that would work failed for various reasons (a/v sync issues, frame stuttering, poor quality video).
My new attempt at transcoding has gone much better, though! I found a freeware program to transcode my 25GB, 2-hour AVI files into 7GB MPEG-2 files, and these files stream well, even on my netbooks, and the quality is very good.
Next up are the AVI clips from the MiniDVs. I found VirtualDub that combines all those clips into a single file, and will use the same transcoder to create MPEG files just like I've done with the AVI files created from 8mm tapes.
The last piece to this is dealing with the M2T file clips. I want to combine all the clips into a single file before I transcode them. Problem is, I can't find a program that concatenates M2T files without also transcoding them, too. VirtualDub doesn't recognize the M2T file format, so I can't use that.
Any suggestions on concatenating M2T files together into a streamable, high-quality video file -- ideally, for FREE?
Over the years, I've used three different camcorders to take home video: Sharp 8mm, Canon MiniDV and Canon HD (tape-based). A long while back, I converted all the tapes I had to their native digital filetypes using one of the Canon camcorder's built-in capabilitiies (AVI files for the 8mm and MiniDV, and M2T files for the HD content). But playing that digital media never worked well in my network, and my attempts at transcoding them into something that would work failed for various reasons (a/v sync issues, frame stuttering, poor quality video).
My new attempt at transcoding has gone much better, though! I found a freeware program to transcode my 25GB, 2-hour AVI files into 7GB MPEG-2 files, and these files stream well, even on my netbooks, and the quality is very good.
Next up are the AVI clips from the MiniDVs. I found VirtualDub that combines all those clips into a single file, and will use the same transcoder to create MPEG files just like I've done with the AVI files created from 8mm tapes.
The last piece to this is dealing with the M2T file clips. I want to combine all the clips into a single file before I transcode them. Problem is, I can't find a program that concatenates M2T files without also transcoding them, too. VirtualDub doesn't recognize the M2T file format, so I can't use that.
Any suggestions on concatenating M2T files together into a streamable, high-quality video file -- ideally, for FREE?