MPEG with interleaved audio to AVI with audio?

[BassPig]

I'm trying to convert a 20 minute MPEG (1/2 D1 resolution) with audio into an AVI with audio.

Adobe Premiere starts the job and seems well on it's way after 2 hours, but the next morning when I check on it, Premiere has terminated and the resulting AVI is corrupt and unplayable.

I have been able to successfully convert small segments of the MPEG file, but doing the whole thing results in crash. I think it's because Premiere goes catatonic for long periods and Windows 2000 thinks it's 'not responding' so it shuts it down automatically.

(I wonder if there is a way to make Windows 2000 extend the delay times so it doesn't shut down a non-responding app too soon?)

I am in search of a standalone utility that can convert such files.

I tried MPEG2AVI, but there's no sound.

Any suggestions?

[jeremymacmull]

Hey there

It seems what you want to do is convert a standard MPEG1 file to divx or avi or such

I think you are going about it the wrong way

The best way to do this would be load the file into virtual dub and compress audio to mp3 and video to divx /xvid etc

this would be far easier than the method u are using and probably considerably faster plus if the mpeg was not corrupt to begin with(which can be fixed with vcd gear on downloads page) then it should produce a perfectly good avi file

anyway hope this helps as for windows shutting down check under the power options of windows and check that the computer is not meant to shut down after x hours of inactivity

hope this helps

Jeremy MacMull

[BassPig]

I tried VirtualDub and got a MPEG Import filter pack synchronization error when trying to import the MPEG2 file.

Media player can play the file with no problems. But Premiere plays for 5 seconds, then freezes for 60 seconds, then plays the next 5 seconds and so on.

[jggimi]

Vdub does not support MPEG-2, though VdubMod will.

I use DVD2AVI to manage MPEG-2 streams...actually, I use the Gordian Knot encoding suite (designed for DVDs), which uses DVD2AVI to demux audio and frameserve the video, and DVD2AVI will accept MPEG-2 in elemental streams (.m2v) or system (.mpg) format, as well as .vob streams.

[BassPig]

I downloaded DVD2AVI 1.82 and was able to open the MPEG file but when I chose to save as AVI and uncompressed, the program said it was done the instant I clicked OKAY. I found the file, but it is 0-bytes in length. I then attempted to repeat the process but DVD2AVI generated errors and closed down.
Short of shooting off the PC screen with my camcorder, what other conversion options remain?

Update: I am experimenting with mpeg2avi right now and that app is unable to even open my mpeg 2 file. I am getting this> "list_insert_file(): line could not open 'filename'"

I'm somewhat perturbed that the file plays fine in Media Player, but no application can read it for conversion purposes!

[ChristianHJW]

Do as you were told already and try VirtualdubMod ( http://sf.net/projects/virtualdubmod ). It can read MPEG2 fine ...

[BassPig]

I just downloaded a bunch of zip files from the link you provided. It's very confusing as to what I need. There are about 2 dozen download choices. I chose:

VirtualDubMod_1_4_13_1.zip
virtualdubmod_needed_dlls_301002.zip
VirtualDubMod_needed_DLLs_251102.zip

and unzipped them to a folder. I ran the program, which seemed to start okay. I loaded my MPEG2 file and got two warnings:

"incomplete MPEG file detected. last frame is maybe corrupte"
and

"MPEG import filter: MPEG file does not contain video stream"

What am I missing here? I'm not even sure I downloaded all the correct components for virtualdubmod.

[jeremymacmull]

hey there is no need to be rude in the forum ChristianHJW poor guy hes just asking a question

Um as for the answer um if its an MPEG2 stream id use VDUB mod are u sure its mpeg2 and not a variant like PVA captured off a Digital TV card or such??

Where did you get this mpeg2 file what was the source eg. DVD, HDTV etc

it might help as a pva file wont open in premiere properly nor in vdubmod anyway

we wait for the answer heh heh

Jeremy MacMull

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by jeremymacmull hey there is no need to be rude in the forum ChristianHJW poor guy hes just asking a question

:eek: ... rude ? Sorry, didnt ment to be rude at all, my answer was probably typical German, clear and precise, and this is sometimes understood as being rude :D .... sorry about that

Um as for the answer um if its an MPEG2 stream id use VDUB mod are u sure its mpeg2 and not a variant like PVA captured off a Digital TV card or such??
Where did you get this mpeg2 file what was the source eg. DVD, HDTV etc
it might help as a pva file wont open in premiere properly nor in vdubmod anyway .we wait for the answer heh heh
Jeremy MacMull

Good hint Jeremy, if its a MPEG Transport Stream ( TS ), than VdubMod will not be able to open it properly. Use Nic's DVD2AVI ( http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41335 ) then, look up the DVB/HDTV section here for more info on it.

Another tip :

http://christian.matroska.org/downloads/virtualdub-151-mpeg2-ac3.zip

This is a version of Virtualdub modded by fcchandler, his code will be used in next VdubMod for parsing MPEG2 instead of the DVD2AVI code that was used by pulco-citron, one of the VdubMod project admins.

fcchandler swears its MPEG parser is much improved, and the reactions from users are all positive. It wont help if your file is a MPEG TS, but if its just a 'strange' MPEG PS file you may try it instead. Note it can only export to AVI, not to OGM like VirtualdubMod.

[jggimi]

I downloaded DVD2AVI 1.82 and was able to open the MPEG file but when I chose to save as AVI and uncompressed, the program said it was done the instant I clicked OKAY... I wouldn't know about 1.82, as the release I use is 1.76, which is the release required for frameserving via AviSynth (the Gordian Knot methodology).

I don't use it to directly create AVI, rather, I "save project" and use the demuxed audio and .d2v project file as input to other steps, as I described earlier.

You might try using a codec, rather than uncompressed AVI, which will fill disk space faster than you can imagine. Example: 320x240 25fps, 20 minutes, 24-bit color, will consume 6.4 Gigabytes. If the video is 640x480, the space required will be 25.7 GB. AVI is limited to 2GB, though there are methodologies that some applications use to go beyond that size, such as file segmentation (popular: Vdub uses it) and OpenDML (less popular: may increase file size to 4GB, but few applications exploit it).

[BassPig]

Originally posted by jeremymacmull


Um as for the answer um if its an MPEG2 stream id use VDUB mod are u sure its mpeg2 and not a variant like PVA captured off a Digital TV card or such??

Where did you get this mpeg2 file what was the source eg. DVD, HDTV etc

it might help as a pva file wont open in premiere properly nor in vdubmod anyway

Jeremy MacMull


I don't know if it's a PVA file, but some utility I put it through told me it's Main Profile & Main Level MPEG2. The only thing odd is it's 352H x 480V.
It's a transfer from 8mm film of a nuclear test blast in Nevada in 1955. The encoder type is unknown.

[BassPig]

Originally posted by jggimi
I wouldn't know about 1.82, as the release I use is 1.76, which is the release required for frameserving via AviSynth (the Gordian Knot methodology).

I don't use it to directly create AVI, rather, I "save project" and use the demuxed audio and .d2v project file as input to other steps, as I described earlier.

You might try using a codec, rather than uncompressed AVI, which will fill disk space faster than you can imagine. Example: 320x240


There are so many flavors of applications for converting this and that, but I am starting to suspect I have a weird format here.
I use uncompressed for everything I do (1/2TB of RAID arrays here, so no problem for a 15-minute nuke test video) as I do not wish to degrade the quality by recompressing. I will eventually recompress onto DVD MPEG2 (but at the full D1 resolution--this clip I have is 1/2 of D1.
I also tried bringing the clip directly into Scenarist for the heck of it, but it was rejected unceremoniously.