Better Minecraft Videos

I was unhappy as hell with the quality of my last two videos, so spent the last week learning how to master video, and hopefully the results are better. I changed the videos out so now they're larger and easier to see. I'd like to do HD but a 12 minute video takes around 7 hours to rip - too damn long - so forget it! What I don't understand is that I have a really brutally fast machine with two cross fired video cards, 8 gigs of ram and it still takes forever!?! WTF?

What I need is something that will stitch together two or more .avi files without reformatting the damn things. I make really nice videos but then they get butchered in the reformatting. If I could just rebuild the index and leave the video alone I'd have damn near perfect videos. I hear Linux has a good utility for this but I haven't found anything for windows yet. I think handbrake will probably do it but it might take the rest of my life to figure that shit out.

Anyway, I haven't played at all since the last recording.

Thank you Yeneeko for the invite, as soon as I get a chance I'll check out your server.