can't combine videos with oggCat

[DavidCary]

A popular way to make long videos involves recording many scenes, then combine the best ones together into one long video.
Wouldn't it be nice if I could do this with open-source software, using open formats free from patent restrictions?

I have a bunch of short videos in Ogg Theora ".ogv" format.
Combining them together with "oggCat" (or simply "cat") doesn't give the result I expect -- I want one long video, that, when played, shows scene 1, then scene 2, then scene 3, etc.

Rather than attaching the (huge!) video files I'm working with,
I hope the following short scripts are adequate to track down and fix the bug -- they give exactly the same errors.

I hear that oggCat can't handle sticking together files that are "too different" (not sure what exactly needs to be the same), so for test purposes I try to concatenate the same file to itself -- even that doesn't work.

To reproduce:

# installing:
    sudo apt-get install oggvideotools
    oggCat
# tells me
# -- package and version "oggvideotools 0.8"

# Simple example:
    mkdir temp
    cd temp
    # get test video from http://wiki.xiph.org/TheoraTestsuite
    wget http://v2v.cc/~j/theora_testsuite/320x240.ogg
    cp 320x240.ogg 2.ogg
    oggCat o.ogg 320x240.ogg 2.ogg
# I expected a "o.ogg" file that ran twice as long as the original file.
# Instead, oggCat responds with this error message:
# StreamMux::operator<<: Warning: packet number for stream <0> not matching: expected: 123 got 3

# Complex example:
    mkdir temp
    cd temp
    # get test jpeg and turn into (very) short ".ogv" video
    wget http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Buzz_salutes_the_U.S._Flag.jpg/595px-Buzz_salutes_the_U.S._Flag.jpg
    cp 595px-Buzz_salutes_the_U.S._Flag.jpg a.jpg
    cp a.jpg b.jpg
    # create output.avi (motion jpeg in ".avi" container)
    mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf fps=5 -o output.avi -ovc copy
    # create output.ogv from output.avi
    ffmpeg2theora --framerate 5 --speedlevel 2 --width 640 --height 360 output.avi
    # test video -- looks OK
    mplayer output.ogv
    cp output.ogv o2.ogv
    oggCat o3.ogg output.ogv o2.ogv
# I expected a "o3.ogv" file that ran twice as long as the original "output.ogv" file.
# Instead, oggCat responds with this error message:
#
# OggRingbuffer::getNextPageLength: ERROR ogg packet not aligned
# 4c cd 77 52 40 8b d9 59 a8 de 03 a5 b4 f6 94 34
# ...
# d9 d0 23 d9 ad 1e 90 ab be cd 89 d0 b0 09 97 4b
# Aborted

What's the next step to creating long videos?

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: oggvideotools 0.8-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-16.28-generic 3.0.17
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-16-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: blackmagic
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Mar 1 16:49:51 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release amd64 (20111012)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: oggvideotools
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Volodya (volodya)]

I can add that i have also tested the files with oggz-validate, and they come out ok. So it's the problem with oggCat

[Volodya (volodya)]

Debian claims to have fixed it in 2012 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=652958

[Volodya (volodya)]

http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/i386/oggvideotools/download This package fixes the problem. Although for some odd reason oggResize has been removed.

[Adrian Bunk (bunk)]

This bug is fixed since quantal.