Every Episode of... Playing at the Same Time

October 19, 2017 8:21 AM

How do create a video that is synchronized simultaneous playback four other videos?

I have four large videos in .mp4 format that I want to watch together. While there are ways to play the videos separately I'd rather have a single video that consists of the simultaneous playback of all four. These are video only files, no audio.

This a one off project so my first thought was to get a trial of Adobe Premiere. But is that my best option? How should I go about this?

posted by zinon to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

Do you mean playback on four devices, or some arrangement of the four videos on one screen? I'm guessing you mean the latter, given your reference to Adobe Premiere.

Assuming this, the most reliable method I know of would be to make one video with the four clips playing at once, and to do so, you can pick up free software (recent Tech Radar review/roundup), because you're not doing anything more complicated than making a composite video. I don't know video editing or those programs specifically to suggest one over another, but given that they're free, you could check out their user interfaces or look for composite video tutorials and go from there.

Also: what platform(s) are you using to edit the videos? Mac, Windows, iOS or Android?
posted by filthy light thief at 9:04 AM on October 19, 2017

Response by poster: I want a single video that's quad split screen with each quadrant showing a separate video. I'll be using Windows to edit. And, in case it matters, the videos are 10 hours long and each file is about 18 GBs.
posted by zinon at 9:24 AM on October 19, 2017

You can certainly use ffmpeg to do this. Check this related question which involves doing the same thing.

(To clarify this will make you new video file, which you can play wherever.)
posted by so fucking future at 10:38 AM on October 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

I haven't tried it, but it looks like VLC can play multiple files at once, synchronously! There are other possible options listed in that Superuser discussion around the question of synchronizing three video files, which gets to your question, as there are number of solutions for comparing two videos (but not more).
posted by filthy light thief at 10:38 AM on October 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Here's a tutorial on how to do it in FFMpeg.

Avisynth is also worth looking into if you want a bit more control.
posted by neckro23 at 11:17 AM on October 19, 2017

You can do this in Camtasia Studio pretty easily but I don't envy you the file size of that video.
posted by guster4lovers at 3:35 PM on October 19, 2017