[erw]

I am triying to convert a buch of .mov's and .avi's to DV to put on a compilation DVD but my audio disappears when I do this. I am fairly sure this didn't happen pre QT6.1. What is going on?

[Uncle Skeleton]

what settings are you using for the export, and what program? does this happen with all (non-mpeg) files or just certain ones? btw, are you converting for the purpose of editing in iMovie or what? iDVD takes mov files as input, and DVDSP takes only mpeg-2

[erw]

I am using quicktime pro 6.1 set to DV dtream, PAL and 44.1Khz. Should I use DVCPRO instead of DV stream? I was going to put them in iDVD to burn. Its a mic of avi's mpeg1 and movs.

[Uncle Skeleton]

well, the mov's and avi's are a mystery. QT has a stroke when dealing with MPEG1 and MPEG2 files (except MPEG1 layer3, which are fine), in that it treats them as one large sample and refuses to export the audio. You can work around it by demuxing with bbDemux and changing the m1a or m2a to mp2 or mp3 and converting with iTunes to actual mp3 or aiff or wav. Then convert the video with QTPro or anything else and add video to audio with QTPro or Sync-Hole.

if you want to cut and paste, I suggest you just do it in QTPro (you can fine tune with the left/right arrow keys) instead of exporting to DV. I don't know if iDVD will even accept a DV stream without first saving it as a mov in QTPro.

AFAIK, iDVD only accepts mov files as input, so you can mov-ify your avi's with Divx Doctor II. I would skip the whole DV export step, though I'm pretty concerned that it doesn't work...And see if iDVD retains the sound when converting to MPEG2. I guess the only way to verify would be to burn it. do you have any DVD-RWs?

all programs can be found on versiontracker of course

[erw]

I was having a bad weekend and may have jumped to premature conclusions. Mpeg1 and 2 definitely aren't working but one mov did, I haven't tried any avi's yet. Your post confirms what I was beginning to suspect- I need to demux.

I managed to do this but so far haven't been able to get the audio back in. If I try dragging and dropping the demuxed audio file onto the movie (in QTPRO) it just gets added to the beginning. Is it because I didn't conver the file to mp3, aiff or wav? Or am I doing something else wrong?

[Uncle Skeleton]

dragging is a metaphore for Paste. What you need is Add. There might be a modifier key like option-drag for Add, but I don't know it. If you can't select and copy the mpeg track, you will have to convert it. I've heard that iDVD will also not accept mov files with mpeg1/2 tracks (like, you can't just open an mpeg file and save it as a mov file), so there's a chance you will have to export the video and audio to other formats before adding. But I haven't tried it, and I don't have iDVD installed anymore.

[erw]

Next dumb question! How do I convert the m1v to mp2 or mp3?

[Uncle Skeleton]

m1v is the video. you had that covered right from the start, right?

perhaps you'd like to read this: http://nsorscher.home.attbi.com/movieFAQ/#convert, down near the bottom, "how do I convert mpeg" or something. I wrote this a while ago, but I try to keep it reasonably up to date

[erw]

Doh! Typo I meant m1a not m1v. I also tried changing the extension to mp2 (tho didn't change the file type or creator codes since I am using OSX). I tried converting with iTunes but got an error, unknown something: I can't remember and I am at work no so I cant try it at the moment.

Maybe this is just a problem file and I should try another?

[Uncle Skeleton]

no, you have to delete (or change to MPEG/hook I believe) the file type and creator. there are about a dozen utilities to do this on versiontracker, or there's a terminal command I can't remember the name of. SetFile I think. I saw this one on MacOSXHints I think, and posted in this forum about importing jpegs into iMovie if you want to search for it

[erw]

Thanks Uncle Skeleton! I finally got there.

Changed the type and creator of the bbdemuxed m1a to MPEG/hook with XRay and converted to aiff with iTunes. Then converted the m1v to DV and ADDed the aiff file and saved as mov. Could drag and drop into iDVD. Not burned it yet but hoping there should be no probs now.

[erw]

Spoke too soon. I can't import the movies into iMovie! Any suggestions?

[Uncle Skeleton]

DV is a codec, as well as a file format (DV stream), just like mpeg-4. iMovie only opens DV stream files. You can export DV codec files to DV Stream with no quality loss, but you need 2x the disk space. iDVD, in contrast, opens mov files, but not avi or mpeg, or mov files with mpeg (1 and 2) video tracks. I don't know about DV stream files.

[erw]

I exported the mov from quicktime as DV. This imports into iMovie but nothing appears! I also tried importing a media clip on the disk that was put there by iMove when importing from my digicamcorder, but iMovie said it was the wrong format. The project opens ok. I have never tried this before so I don't know if this is correct or my iMovie is stuffed. Do you have any thoughts?

[Uncle Skeleton]

this one I don't know. my only idea is that iMovie splits files into ~2GB segments I think when capturing. Try spliting up the DV file into small pieces and importing separately, if it is large. Also, maybe it is the wrong framerate or resolution for your project or something. If that doesn't work, call Apple (or I think they have support forums) about how you can't import an iMovie created DV file back into iMovie

[Eug]

How about this?

I have lots of MPEG-2 clips from my DVD-RAM camcorder. The way that machine works is that every time I stop recording, it saves it as a separate clip. So if I start and stop 50 times, I have 50 separate clips. I then can download the clips on my PC (since I can't find Mac software for this), and then copy them over to the Mac.

QTPro reads them fine but like you mentioned earlier, it cannot export the audio in .dv format. I can demux (using ffmpegX) each clip to .m2v and .mp2 and convert them accordingly. However, this gets very tedious very fast when you're dealing with 50 different clips.

I can load them ALL in QTPro and save them as one .mov file. The audio in those is maintained, and all 50 clips are in one file.

The only problem though is it seems that if I export that to DV, again, I lose the audio.

What software to use to demux the audio from that composite .mov file?

Also, which software allows batch demuxing? In the meantime I'll try BBDemux. I hear it recently added some batch features.

[Eug]

By the way, would finding QT Pro 5 solve my problems?

[Uncle Skeleton]

no, QT4-6 all have this problem. I never tried with 3 but I don't know why it would work, and I don't have any machines that can boot OS 8 or whatever to find out.

I was under the impression that MEncoder (or MPlayer at least) could read mov input. you could give that a shot at decoding your combine mov (or just he audio) all at once into one big file

[Eug]

Hmmm... it's a moot point.

It seems my combo QuickTime files end up giving me the first .mpg clip and then stops there for the video. Only the audio is maintained.

I can rename the .mov to .mpg and Extractor will work on it. However, because of the problem above, if I demux I get a 30 second clip with the rest of the 20 minute .mpg as being the same scene. I get 20 minutes of the right audio though.

What a PITA.

[erw]

Eug, how did you get on with bbDemux? It will do a load of files if you drag and drop them but it stops to ask where you want to save each so you need to be around to keep hitting return.

Interestingly if you hold down return it seem to demux quicker. Hope I am not doing something stupid when I do that.

[Eug]

Originally posted by erw:
Eug, how did you get on with bbDemux? It will do a load of files if you drag and drop them but it stops to ask where you want to save each so you need to be around to keep hitting return.

Interestingly if you hold down return it seem to demux quicker. Hope I am not doing something stupid when I do that.

Extractor works very well for batch demuxing. You just have to tell it once where to save it and it saves all the files there. It also has an option to save all the files together in one audio and one video file. Cool!

The only problem is that iMovie will NOT import ultra large video files. If I use Extractor to merge my 99 clips, I get this large 20 minute video file. However, 20 mins of video is well over 4 GB. If I drop that into iMovie it tries to import it but the file never shows up.

I think I'll stick with the short clips for now. It actually makes editing easier to just be able to have a bazillion short clips stitchable together.

iTunes 3 can do batch conversion of .mp2 to .mp3 or .aif too. Now I just need a batch converter of .m2v to .dv.

[erw]

yeah I think imovie has a clip size limit of 2Gb. This has caused me many problems. I am hoping iMovie3 will get rounds this or FCE. Anyone know?

[Eug]

Well, whaddya know. iMovie 3 will import the video directly from .mpg and .m2v files now. See here.