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How to join & play split concert files

Many of the full uncut concert files (video and/or audio) are too big to upload and download as 1 file from file repositories such as MediaFile. In this case, the files are divided into a number of parts for uploading and downloading. These files must be joined together before the concert file can be played. Instructions are provided for using the free program 7-Zip to join the files on a Windows PC. Alternately, the paid program WinRar can be used on Windows. I'm hoping someone else will post instructions for MACs.

Before downloading 7-Zip and installing on a Windows PC, you first need to know if you are running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows. Then download the correct version of 7-Zip and install. More detailed instructions follow.

Determine Windows 32-bit or 64-bit:

• Click the Start menu in the bottom left corner of Windows.
  
• Click "Control Panel" in the right list.
  
• If "View by" (in upper right corner) is set to Category, click "System and Security" OR change "View by" to "Large icons" or "Small icons".
  
• Click on "System".
  
• Find the line for "System type" - this should say either "32-bit" or "64-bit" Operating System.
  

Download 7-Zip:

Download and install 7-zip from the following site making sure you get the correct version for either 32-bit or 64-bit Windows:

www.7-zip.org/

Joining files with 7-Zip:

The following instructions for joining split files works for split files of several different file types, for example, files with names ending in "ts.001" or "mpg.001" or "flac.part1.rar", etc. The files should have a number somewhere in the file name with the first file in the sequence starting with "1".

• Put all of the split files to be joined into 1 directory on your PC and make sure you know how to navigate to that directory.
  
• Start 7-Zip.
  
• In the upper left section, under the green "Add" button, is a small folder icon with a green arrow pointing up. Use this button and the dropdown file box to the right of this icon to navigate to the folder where you put the split files.
  Note: this navigation process can be a bit tricky in 7-Zip. If you put the folder with the split files under you "Documets" folder, it is a bit easier. Then continually click the folder icon with green arrow till you get to a place where you see "Computer, Documents, Network" in a list. At this point, click on "Documents".
  
• A list of the split files in the folder will be displayed in 7-Zip.
  
• Click on the first file in the list (should say "1" somewhere in the file name).
  
• Click the blue "Extract" button near the top left of 7-Zip.
  
• Click "OK" in the "Extract" window that pops up. You can change the name and/or location of the folder where the joined (extracted) file will be placed if desired.
  
• The file join will start and may take some time.
  
• When done, the joined file will be under another folder in the same folder the split files were in. This folder will have the name of the joined file. (If you did not change the default name and/or location.)
  

Playing the joined concert file:

Video files with extension "mpg" or "mp4" should play in Windows Media Player/Center or iTunes with no problem.

Video files with extension "ts" or "m2ts" and audio files with extension "flac" can be played with the VLC Player program or you can install additional "codec" files to play them in Windows Media Center/Player. (A codec is a program which tells the player how to decode the video and/or audio format.) iTunes will not play any of these file formats!

TS & M2TS video files:

Video files with the "ts" or "m2ts" can be played with Windows Media Player/Center (additional video codecs may need to be installed first) or with the VLC Player program. See the instructions under "FLAC audio files" for information on installing the VLC Player.

If the "ts" or "m2ts" file does not play automatically using Windows Media Player/Center then you need to download the video "codec" file for ts & m2ts files. (Note: The codec is not installed on windows by default. However, the codec may have been installed with another video program, so check if the file plays in WMP/C first.) I installed the K-Lite Codec Pack and it works great on Windows 7. There are other options also. (The "ts" file format is used in broadcasting systems and internally contains MPEG-2 video.)

K-Lite Codec Pack:
codecguide.com/ or
www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Codec_Pack.htm

FLAC audio files:

To play "flac" audio files, you either need to download the VLC media player software or install the proper "codec" file for playing flac files in Windows Media Center. ITunes will not play flac files.

VLC Media Player:
www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html

madFLAC codec for playing Flac files in Windows Media Player/Center (Note: the link for downloading madFLAC is the small green "Download [madFLAC 1.10]" text near the top of page. The big green download button in the middle of the page takes you to the download for an advertised software.):
www.free-codecs.com/madFlac_download.htm

Instructions for installing madFLAC codec:
www.howtogeek.com/howto/13843/how-to-play-flac-files-in-windows-7-media-center-player/

For a full list of software that will play FLAC files on different operating systems, including FLAC to CD & CD to FLAC guidelines, see:
flac.sourceforge.net/documentation_tasks.html

ETA: Added information that VLC Player can play "ts" and "m2ts" files also.

Downloading uncut full concert videos!

Many ATopers have expressed an interest in downloading the QAL full uncut concert videos. Usually these videos are distributed by "torrents" because it is cheap and fast. However, many people either cannot or do not want to use torrents for various reasons I won't go into here. Downloading from a file sharing site such as MediaFire is another option for sharing these videos. However, these files are rather large (the London Day 3 video is 7.5 GB) and beyond the capacity of the free file sharing services. One needs a business acount on MediaFire, for example, to be able to share these large files and this cost money! The monthly charges are based both on the number of GBs uploaded and the number of GBs downloaded by each person. If you go over the alloted download quota, you get charged at higher rates for the extra downloads just like if you go over the number of minutes on a limited cell phone account.

So, many people do not want to host these very popular, very large files on their MedieFire accounts. Devenlane has graciously offered to make the large QAL concert videos avaiable to us on her MediaFire account. I've already posted the link for the Kiev concert in Reply #34 of this thread. I know many of you have downloaded this file because the download rate on her account increaded significantly after I posted the link. Over 9/10 of her montly download quota has been used and the month is only half over. Additonal download quota is sold in units of $70.

I've seen post from a number of people who say they would pay ANYTHING to get copies of these videos. Well, now is your chance to prove it! There is a "Donate" button on Devenlane's blog page where you can make a donation by PayPal or credit card, etc. I would like to suggest a donation of $2 per concert video (i.e. $2 for Kiev, $2 for London, etc). See:

devenlane.blogspot.com/

If you haven't seen Devenlane's blog site before, I highly suggest you take a look. She posts videos and pictures for every Adam event and interview to her MediaFire for people to download at will. She puts alot of her time, heart, and soul into doing this for all of us!

I now have the links for the London Day 3 video and the Moscow video (Note that the Moscow video is not of near as high quality as the Kiev and London Day 3 videos!). However, in order to control the download rates so as not to overload her account, I will only be giving out the links via PM. I will give priority to 1) people who have made a donation to Devenlane's blog account, and 2) people making DVDs for others.

The London Day 3 video is split into 15 500MB files for downloading. Use the instructions posted in Reply #33 of this thread for joining the files into 1 playable file. The resulting file is in *.ts format and instructions for playing this file are also in Reply #33. Instructions for making a DVD from a *.ts file have been posted by several people in earlier posts of this thread. Once I try it, I'll post how I did it.

Also, the London Day 3 video uses version 1 of Terra's imporved audio mix. This audio mixes the videos original audio with the TALCvid higher quality audio. There is a verison 2 of Terra's audio mix which boosts the mid & high frequency ranges to sound better over speakers (tested on 5.1 Dolby system) and fixes a very small (milli-second) time sync issue between the 2 audios. I will be posting in the next day or two instructions on how to remux (remix) the version 2 audio with the video using a free software. It really is very easy to do with the proper instructions!

London Day 2 Multi-Cam DVD!

There is now a multi-cam DVD for the London Day 2 concert that was provided by a QueenZone member. It is chaptered so that you can forward to the next song, and has a song menu. It also has options to play in either stereo or 5.1 surround sound mode. The DVD was made using video from multiple sources and a separate high quality audio recording, so the sound is excellent!

This DVD is provided as an "ISO file" which is an exact disc image of the DVD. The 7.5 GB ISO file was split into multiple smaller files and uploaded to a MediaFire account. The split files must be downloaded, and then joined back together using free software to get the ISO file. The ISO file can then be burned to DVD. Or the ISO file can be played directly in VLC Media Player on your PC.

To obtain this DVD, you need to do the following:

1) If you have not donated recently, make a $2 donation to Devenlane's blog account to help defray the cost of hosting & downloading these files (see « Reply #35 on Sept 14, 2012, 5:55pm » above in this thread). Then send me a PM to requqest the download link.
2) Download 16 files of size 500 MB each (or 39 files of 200 MB each).
3) Join the files together using the free software 7-Zip (very easy to do).
4) Burn the ISO file to a Dual Layer 8.5 GB DVD disc (very, very easy to do). (Or play on your PC using VLC Media Player.)

Downloading depends on your network capabilities. With a basic cable network it took me about 4 hours to download the files, downloading more than one file at a time.

Instructions for the last 2 steps are posted in the entry below this one and reference instructions above in « Reply #33 on Sept 11, 2012, 3:03am ».

You don't need any special techie skills to do this! You just need to know if your DVD burner can burn to Dual Layer 8.5 GB DVDs. You should figure this out before downloading the files!

If you have a PC that came with Windows 7, the odds are that your DVD burner will write to Dual Layer disks. If your PC came with Windows XP, you really need to check. If you do not know, send me a PM and I will write some instructions on how to find out.

It really doesn't take alot of techie skills to do this, just time! If you have any problems, I will be happy to answer any questions by PM.

If your DVD burner can not burn to Dual Layer disks, or your network is just too slow, or if this is too much for you, then be patient and we will figure out ways to provide the DVD to you. Likely we will have a Single Layer ISO file that can be downloaded within a few weeks. But if you need a hard copy sent to you it will take some time, likely a couple of months.

Aside from the fact that I don't find following these instructions easily, I have a Mac so I am left out of the loop.

DancyGeorgia said

Scroll is your friend if you don't want to read about technical details! Audio file formats is a complex subject. Hopefully I kept it simple enough.

MP4 (Mpeg-4) is what is called a "container" format used heavily in internet streaming. Other examples of container formats are TS and MTS which are used in broadcasting. Files in container formats can contain "streams" of video data, audio data, and text data (e.g. subtitles for the video). It may even contain more than 1 audio stream. I have a London Day 3 video in TS format with 3 different audio streams to chose from. If I play the file in VLC Media Player, I can choose which of the 3 audio steams I want it to play with the video, just like one can choose a different language or subtitles on some videos.

A MP4 file can contain audio in different formats, with AAC being the most commonly used but MP3 also possible.

M4A audio files are just MP4 files with only an audio stream. It is still a container file in the same format as MP4.

MP3 files are audio only files. They are not container files. The audio in the MP3 file is "compressed", i.e., the original audio was run through a software program that makes the file smaller by throwing out some of the audio data in frequency regions that humans don't hear very well. It is a "lossy" compression format, meaning that you cannot recover the original audio signal for the MP3 file since some of the information was thrown out. For music, the sound quality of MP3 depends on the "bit-rate" used in the compression algorithm. Most music download sites use a bit-rate of 256 kbps (kilo-bits per second) which is a good compromise between audio quality and file size. MP3 files with a bit-rate of 320 kbps are even better, but they are larger in size.

AAC is an audio only file which uses a better "lossy" audio compression algorithm than MP3. So, if you compare a MP3 and AAC file with the same bit-rate, the AAC file will have a better audio quality. AAC is the default audio format for YouTube, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, etc.

FLAC is another audio only file which uses a "lossless" audio compression. No audio information is lost during the compression so that the original audio can be reconstructed from the compressed file. FLAC files have better audio quality than either MP3 or AAC files. But FLAC files are much larger than MP3 or AAC files. Audiophiles prefer music in FLAC files. VLC Media Play can play FLAC files. Windows Media Player can also play FLAC files IF you also install a FLAC codec (the software that can read and interpret the compressed format). Instructions are in the How To thread of ATop. ALL OF THE LONDON QAL CONCERTS ARE AVAILABLE IN FLAC FORMAT, SO IT IS WELL WORTH BEING ABLE TO PLAY FLAC FILES ON YOUR COMPUTER USING HEADPHONE - YOU WILL LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IT!!! Some audio receivers can also play FLAC files on your stereo system.

If you download a video from YouTube in SD (Standard Definition, 360p) format, the audio will have a bit rate around 96 kbps. However, if you download a video from YouTube in HD (High Definition, either 720p or 1080p) format, the audio will have a bit rate around 192 kbps. So, if you want to rip audio from a video you downloaded from YouTube, use the HD video if available. However, either way, the audio is of lower quality than what you typically download from itunes or Amazon. 192 kbps would be good quality for an audiobook but is medium-low quality for music. 96 kbps is really low quality for music.

Back to the files in question. The person may have recorded the audio with a video camera, but could not hold the camera up to get video because of security. In this case, it may have originally been in a MP4 format which contained AAC or MP3 audio, most likely AAC which was later converted to MP3.

The kai357 MP4 download contains AAC audio with a bit rate of 114 kbps and "nominal" (maximum) bit rate of 128 kbps. norbik131's MP3 download of Japan Day 1 is in 128 kbps. My guess is that the kai357 download may have a bit better audio quality than the norbik131 download. There is also a MP3 download from Sccorpiobert which is in 256 kbps. This is likely better quality than the other 2 formats, but that is difficult to determine without knowing how the person obtained/converted the audio. This audio is supposed to fit on a CD but is one big file.

Any questions?

How to unzip zip files in Windows

In Windows 7, 8, and Vista you don't need any special software to unzip files. There are 2 methods: 1) Double click on the zip file and then in the upper left corner of the file manager window click "Extract all files". 2) Right click on the zip file and select "Extract All" from the pop-up menu.

How to in Windows 7:



In Windows XP it is a little more involved. Try what they show in the video below, but if that doesn't work then you need to download some software, either 7-Zip, WinZip, or WinRAR. I use 7-Zip because it is free.

How to in Windows XP: