Convert MPEG2/VDO to MPEG1

[aireq]

I'm trying to edit a video I created for work on a DVD-R camcorder. The video editing software that we are using for some reason will not open the DVD's directly. So I'm trying to figure out a lossless way to convert the MPEG2/VDO files from the DVD to MPEG1. I've downloaded DVDx from the downloads section but the MPEGs it generates are much smaller then then original VDO files, so I'm concerned that in the compression I'm loosing quality.

Is there a setting I can set in DVDx that will ensure that there is not reduction in quality in the ripped video? Or is there another (preferably free) program that can do this?

I'm not the one editing the movie. The person who is will be using Apple's iMovie. For some reason she was not able to load the DVD directly from the IFO/VDO files.

[setarip_old]

Hi!For some reason she was not able to load the DVD directly from the IFO/VDO files.Have you PLAYED the DVD-R, to make sure that it's okay?

[dbloom]

You will not be able to losslessly convert to MPEG2 to MPEG1. MPEG1 does not have all of the capabilities of MPEG2 (particularly, but definitely not only, interlaced encoding).

If you do not want to lose quality, you should convert your MPEG2 to DV files as that is iMovie's "native" compression format.

Edit: this might help too: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/

[aireq]

Yes the DVDs play just fine. Is there any other way to convert these movies to something that iMovie can read with out reducing quality or paying $20 for a their MPEG-2 Playback Compoent? $20 isn't to bad, I'd just rather not pay for something I'm only going to use once.

Does this mean that iMovie should not be able to read MPEG-2 DVDs with out this additional converter? Or should it already ,and there's something wrong with the DVDs I'm working with?


Eric

[dbloom]

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17899

Use this to convert the MPEG-2 to DV. Because DV is the format the iMovie would convert it to "anyway", you are not losing any more quality than you would importing any other format into iMovie.

[setarip_old]

$20 isn't to bad, I'd just rather not pay for something I'm only going to use once.If, as you say, it's a project for work, I'd spring for the $20 and do things properly...

[aireq]

I used this program ..

http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-win.html

. . on my PC to convert one of the VDO files to a DV file. However, the 1gb VDO file was converted to a 4 gb DV file. We tried loading it into iMovie on my coworkers MAC, but it would just sit there not responding for a long time. If we ended the process we found that it was indeed loading and the first half of the movie had loaded. However saving that project to a file resulted in a 7gb project file. Mabye this is the only way to go, but i'm not sure if her laptop is going to be able to handle all this when we convert all three 1GB VDOs into 4GB DVs, and then load all three into iMovie.


If we installed MPEG streamclip on her MAC it would not open the VDO files with out MACs MPEG2 converter. So we purchased the MPEG2 converter from MAC for $20. Except generating DV files on her make didn't seem any different from what I did on my pc.


However, with the MPEG2 Playback option we were the able to open the VDO files directly from iMovie. Execpt only the first 10 seconds or so of the movie came in. Actualy this same thing happened with MPEG StreamClip. However, in that software there is some option to "rebuild time-marks" (that's not it, but I forget what it was called exactly). After runing that StreamClip will load the entire VDO.

We tried doing the time mark thing, and then saving another VDO out from StreamClip but when opened in iMovie we still had the problem with only the first 10 seconds or so opening.

Seems like the best solution is to open the VDO directly from iMovie, but we need to figure out why it's not loading the entire file.

[Mug Funky]

perhaps the camera was stopped and re-started at that point?

i'm thinking there's a sequence end-code in that VDO at about 10 sec.

mpeg streamclip should be able to convert the file without needing the mpeg-2 input plugin though. that's strange. maybe try (i know this sounds stupid) re-naming the .VDO to .VOB and giving streamclip another go?