[fromthecloud]

I'm currently trying to convert some movies of mine that are in mpg format to Quicktime so that I can burn them to a DVD using iDVD.

First of all, I am trying to use Final Cut Pro to convert these movies into Quicktime so that I can import them into iDVD. I've used bbDEMUX 1.2.1 to split the movie into two files. It came out with the video in .mpg format and the sound in .mpa format. Final Cut Pro will import the mpeg file but will not import the .mpa file. I get a "File Error: Wrong Type" message.

I've tried changing the extension to .mp2 and importing it into iTunes to change it to .mp3 (which didn't work). Quicktme Pro doesn't give me the option to export it to any usable formats.

Any help?

The programs i'm using are:
OS X.2.2
FCP 3.0.2
Quicktime Pro 6.0.2
bbDEMUX 1.2.1
iTunes 3.0.1

Thanks.

[Nap]

Try converting the sound track to AIFF. I am not familiar with OS X so can't recommend a sound utility in that OS. You could find a copy of SoundApp to run in classic and use it to convert the mpeg sound track to AIFF. QT Pro will then be happy to export it along with the video, which you should copy to the clip board and then Add Scaled to the AIFF audio track. I am not sure of why this is preferable to adding scaled the audio to the video but I have seen a number of people claim it is the preferred way to do it. In any case once the two tracks are together in one clip you can export it to what ever format iDVD requires.

[lucylawless]

I've never had problems converting mp2 in iTunes, but I don't do it all the time. Did you try stripping the type/creator codes (with an of a dozen utilites on versiontracker)? If it really doesn't work, try MediaPipe, and if that doesn't work SoundApp definitely will.

There are two reasons you must avoid scaling the audio track. 1 is that when converting video formats about, the video framerate sometimes gets off, but the audio is always right. Scaling the audio will change the pitch of all the sounds and voices, and your ear is much more sensitive to slight speed changes than your eye is. The 2nd reason is because computer sound cards only support certain quantum frequencies (48khz, 44.1 khz, 22.05 khz, 11.025 khz, etc), and if you scale your audio to an unsupported frequency it will force your cpu to up- or down-sample the audio on the fly, taking time away from the video decoding (something like 25% of the processor time I've heard, or maybe 10%). This is ok if you then re-encode the audio to a supported frequency, but that degrades the quality and it's generally a waste of time if you can just avoid scaling it in the first place.