Increase Maximum Files to Stitch Together

[link470]

I'm currently working on stitching together a bunch of MOD/AVCHD files from cameras and encoding them into a single video.  They don't require editing, this is just videos that need to be connected together, so Adobe Media Encoder's stitching function is the better tool in this case over Adobe Premiere Pro.

However, while some sets I'm having no problem with, others have a larger number of individual clips, and I'm running into the message "Too many source files to display":

If I was dropping all of the files from a single location into Adobe Media Encoder to be stitched/encoded, this wouldn't be an issue.  But many of the files are from other memory cards, and due to the way the camera names the files, you end up with multiple duplicate file names, which Windows Explorer can't handle in a single folder (obviously), but Adobe Media Encoder can have multiple files with the same name in a single stitch set no problem (since the source path is different).

In the screenshot above, you can see I've dragged and dropped my second set of files, and then, I need to expand the sources (by clicking "Show <#> sources") and drag them up into the top set (where everything will be stitched together).  But because Adobe Media Encoder shows Too many source files to display, this is impossible.

My workaround solution is that I currently need to write a script in PowerShell to rename all of the files in the other folder and append "_Set2", and then I can put them into the same Windows folder, and then I can drag them all in as one set, and then pray they're listed in the right order since I can't expand the source list to check.

I'm using Adobe Media Encoder 2023 (hardware won't support newer).  Is this fixed in newer versions so I can expand the source list with a larger number of files?  If not, can this please be added as a feature?  It seems silly to limit this.

[Sven S]

This is an interesting case. Currently, the (visual) limit is set to 250; processing should work with more files. How many files would you normally like to stitch?

[link470]

The specific use case for these is home videos for users who are used to taking a video camera on a vacation and pressing start/stop record and coming back with a 8mm or mini DV tape and capturing the whole thing as a single video.  This was easy back in the day to do; just capture the whole video via a composite capture device or firewire, then export.

With digital video cameras since 2010 or so (which record to AVCHD MTS or MOD files), that same old school "press record and stop record" at everything you see on your trip results in potentially hundreds of these individual video files on the memory card.  While one option is to drag and drop them all into a timeline in Premiere Pro, often, the family just wants them stitched together as a single file that they can watch on their TV or computer to play from start to finish, instead of individually opening video files, which can range anywhere from 5-10 seconds a clip, or 15-30 minutes, depending on what they were recording at the time.  Premiere Pro is therefore overkill when there's no actual editing required at all.

While Handbrake is a great tool for transcoding these, it doesn't solve the problem of stitching them together, and that's where Adobe Media Encoder has been great ever since I discovered it could do this.

Removing the limit of files that can be displayed would allow the ability to drag and drop multiple "sets" of files into the same group of files to be stitched.  For the case of JVC cameras, for example, you end up with folders like PRG001, PRG002, etc. on the memory card, and inside of those, you have files like MOV001, MOV002, etc.  The problem is that the naming convention of those files then repeats for each of the folders, so PRG001 has a MOV001 file, but PRG002 also has a MOV001 file, which means they can't all be assembled in one folder and then dragged and dropped in order because the file system will only allow one file with the same name per folder (of course).  So what you have to do is drag all of the files from PRG001 into Adobe Media Encoder for stitching, ensure they're all in order, then drag in the second set of files from PRG002 into Adobe Media Encoder.  But this second set creates a second set of files.  I need to drag those files in the second set in Adobe Media Encoder up into the first set in the queue, then delete the second set from the queue.

Given that there's typically around 99 files per PRG### folder, and sometimes cameras have 5 or 6 of these folders, you hit the 250 limit really fast, and not being able to see the files in the queue means once you pass 250, you can no longer ensure the order is correct, thus, my PowerShell naming script (or sometimes encoding/stitching a batch of files at a time, then stitching the stitched sets, but I like avoiding a re-encode as much as possible to preserve the highest quality).

If the GUI limit was increased, this would completely avoid this problem.