I’ve been processing my entire DVD library in the background on my Mac Pro using Handbrake, moving all the content into iTunes so that it is accessible from the three Apple TV’s that are connected to each TV in the house. I’ve now hit a some of the videos that are on two discs due to length, and joining M4V files is a bigger pain that it really should be.

One of the easiest ways to do it is with QuickTime Pro, and since I’ve got the Pro version I figured I’d use that. A simple copy/paste of one video to the end of the other followed by an Export to Apple TV creates the combined M4V file. With one big problem.

Huh? 205 hours and 44 minutes? Did someone forget to hit the “turbo” button in QuickTime Pro? What’s really crazy is the two source files are M4V H264 files already! Recoding is not necessary, but it seems determined to recode anyway. I guess I’ll just see what happens, but I’m worried the joined file will be poor quality due to recoding.

Any better options?