[Tyler McAdams]

i had heard the rumor that iMovie 3 could open up mpeg-2 files... does anyone know how to do this? The mepg-2 file I want to import is greyed out when I browse for it...

[dampeoples]

I never tried, but you might need the mpeg-2 playback codec.

[tr]

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
i had heard the rumor that iMovie 3 could open up mpeg-2 files... does anyone know how to do this? The mepg-2 file I want to import is greyed out when I browse for it...

try drag and dropping the file into iMovie. but i think then when you do, iMovie starts to convert it to dv stream.

tr

[Tyler McAdams]

Originally posted by dampeoples:
I never tried, but you might need the mpeg-2 playback codec.

I have the mpeg-2 codec for qt already... I can open the file fine in qt6 but not in imovie for whatever reason... the file itself will not encode to mpeg4 or dv directly from qt for whatever reason... when I try it encodes about 5 min of an hour clip and just stops after that...
The original file plays fine as an mpeg2 file in qt6... but like I said will not export right and will not import to imovie3...

[tr]

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
I have the mpeg-2 codec for qt already... I can open the file fine in qt6 but not in imovie for whatever reason... the file itself will not encode to mpeg4 or dv directly from qt for whatever reason... when I try it encodes about 5 min of an hour clip and just stops after that...
The original file plays fine as an mpeg2 file in qt6... but like I said will not export right and will not import to imovie3...

i also have the mpeg-2 codec for qt. i opened up an mpeg-2 file (.mpg extension, muxed mpeg-2 file, so there's no sound in the following) in qt, exported to DV and mpeg-4. worked fine.

i also took the original mpeg-2 file, and dragged and dropped into iMovie 3. it encoded to DV fine. i cannot, however, import the file using the File menu-->import, it's greyed out.

you note that you have gotten it to encode, but it stops at 5 minutes of an hour of video. the only thing i can think of that may relate to this is the 2Gb clip limit in iMovie. remember, an hour of mpeg-2 is about 2Gb, while an hour of DV is about 12Gb. i was thinking that if you tried to convert that 1 hour mpeg 2 into DV in iMovie, it would stop when the converted DV file reached 2Gb, and that would be about 10 minutes of footage. just some thoughts...

what kind of mpeg-2 file is it, and what extension is at the end of the file?

tr

[Tyler McAdams]

Originally posted by tr:
i also have the mpeg-2 codec for qt. i opened up an mpeg-2 file (.mpg extension, muxed mpeg-2 file, so there's no sound in the following) in qt, exported to DV and mpeg-4. worked fine.

i also took the original mpeg-2 file, and dragged and dropped into iMovie 3. it encoded to DV fine. i cannot, however, import the file using the File menu-->import, it's greyed out.

you note that you have gotten it to encode, but it stops at 5 minutes of an hour of video. the only thing i can think of that may relate to this is the 2Gb clip limit in iMovie. remember, an hour of mpeg-2 is about 2Gb, while an hour of DV is about 12Gb. i was thinking that if you tried to convert that 1 hour mpeg 2 into DV in iMovie, it would stop when the converted DV file reached 2Gb, and that would be about 10 minutes of footage. just some thoughts...

what kind of mpeg-2 file is it, and what extension is at the end of the file?

tr

The mpeg-2 file is the 1st of 4 .vob files that have been recomplied from the movie signs... I took the original movie... stripped it to my hard drive, took out all the extras like french, spanish, and all extras to leave nothing but the movie to play when put in my DVD... after remastering, (on my pc using 1st dvddecrypter to strip to the hd, then dvd2one to remaster) I transfered the VIDEO_TS folder to my G4's harddrive... from there I took the 1st .vob file and copied it to the desktop and then renamed it signs1.mpg... it plays fine (w/o sound) all the way through.. but like I said... when I try to convert it to mp4 or dv... i just get a couple of min's worth of footage... hardly even gets through the opening credits...

What I think I might do is use DVD2AVI on my pc to extract the ac3 file and then use TMPGEnc to encode the mpeg-2 file with the audio and then transfer the file over to the mac for qt6 to export to mp4... I'm not too sure if that will even work though since I've never tried to export a TMPGEnc mpeg-2 encoded file to qt... but my guess is that right now, because I simply changed the .vob file to .mpg there is something snagging in the qt encoding process... the only issue is that encoding with TMPGEnc, although excellent in quality, takes about 6 hours to encode a full movie... not to mention you now have tons of varibles to consider like aspect ratio since your outputting your own mpeg to which will encode on it's own default settings unless you change it to match your imput settings...

I was hoping to get around the 6 hours worth of waiting to see if i got everything right... and instead just ripping the finished vob files and adding them together and then adding the sound which would take a lot less effort..

I have yet to have a moment to try the drag and drop feature you speak of in iMovie3.. I'm at work right now and unforunately all but Macless... I'll try 1st thing tomorrow morning... I'll let you know if it works also...

[tr]

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
... from there I took the 1st .vob file and copied it to the desktop and then renamed it signs1.mpg...

t... but my guess is that right now, because I simply changed the .vob file to .mpg there is something snagging in the qt encoding process...

I have yet to have a moment to try the drag and drop feature you speak of in iMovie3.. I'm at work right now and unforunately all but Macless... I'll try 1st thing tomorrow morning... I'll let you know if it works also...

i think you're on to something here. just renaming the .vob to .mpg might screw up qt somehow. i'm gonna try to rip a .vob, rename, and see if i get qt hangups.

tr

[Uncle Skeleton]

oh dear god, why are you doing all of this? dvd -> vob, vob -> smaller vob, vob -> mac, vob -> DV, then what? to mp4, sounds like? you do know you can do that all in one step with the likes of MEncoder? or two steps with 0SEx/DVDBackup/Extractor (DVD decryptors) and then DiVA/MM2D/MM2C/QT (MPEG2 decoders)?

[Tyler McAdams]

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
oh dear god, why are you doing all of this? dvd -> vob, vob -> smaller vob, vob -> mac, vob -> DV, then what? to mp4, sounds like? you do know you can do that all in one step with the likes of MEncoder? or two steps with 0SEx/DVDBackup/Extractor (DVD decryptors) and then DiVA/MM2D/MM2C/QT (MPEG2 decoders)?

I never have ripped or anything like that on the mac.. I've always used a pc.. but I love quicktime and I just wanted to see how usuable qt was for encoding to different formats... here's the game plan... I just bought a 120GB hd for my g4... I want to use my pc and my g4 together for serveral purposes: 1.) ripping DVD's to a more usuable dvd... in other words get rid of the fat and keep the meat... just the movie... that's it... I don't need the trailers or how it was made or any brushing up on my spanish... I want nothing but the film... 2.) archiving. the 120gb hd is for storage once I've ripped the movie down to mp4 or qt with some space saving codec...

But now that you mention it what tools are best for ripping and burning a DVD on a mac?

My regular work flow, by the way, is:

Dvddecrypter to HD... VIDEO_TS to dvd2one: new video_ts burned to DVD... total process: 1hr from start to finish on my dual athlon with a pioneer dvr-ao4 drive.. should be even shorter with a regular 16x dvd to hd and ao5 to burn.

So you can see, the regular process is very quick... the experimentation with qt6 is the bottleneck in this process.

[Tyler McAdams]

... I'm back home now and I've tried the drag and drop feature with iMovie3 which I'm glad to say works... but the same thing happens with the converted .vob to mpeg file... stops about ten percent of the way through the file then drops the rest... speaking of rest, i've got to get some sleep but please feel free to comment if you think of something... thx!!!

[Eug]

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
... I'm back home now and I've tried the drag and drop feature with iMovie3 which I'm glad to say works... but the same thing happens with the converted .vob to mpeg file... stops about ten percent of the way through the file then drops the rest... speaking of rest, i've got to get some sleep but please feel free to comment if you think of something... thx!!!

I thought there was a 9 minute limit or something?

Anyways, this is not a good solution, because iMovie 3 will remove the audio, IIRC.

The way I've done it is to demux manually with 3rd party software and then convert to DV. Definitely less than ideal, but it works.

[klinux]

I have only tried the DVD stuff (VOB to DivX or MPEG-1) only on PC only. Seems there are more resoruces/knowledge to do this in the PC side. Sorry can't help.

[Uncle Skeleton]

let me help you out: don't even touch iMovie. iMovie is for editing, not compression. in fact quite the opposite, as mentioned above, iMovie decompresses video to the DV codec, which is huge. If you can, you should avoid any unnecessary conversions. every conversion decreases quality and introduces artifacts that decrease compression efficiency.

To convert from MPEG-2 to quicktime (try the 3ivx for compression), use one of MacMPEG2Decoder, MacMPEG2Converter, QuickTime Pro with MPEG2 decoder component, DiVA, or MediaPipe, the last two being OS X only. DiVA is the fastest, especially on duals. Other options exist for MPEG2 to avi or mp4 in OS X such as ffmpegX, MEncoder, or openShiiva. Some of these also accept VOB files, but the only ones I'm sure of are DiVA and openShiiva (actually shiiva only accepts vobs I think)

those are off the top of my head. if you have any specific questions ask them, but try some of these first

[Tyler McAdams]

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
let me help you out: don't even touch iMovie. iMovie is for editing, not compression. in fact quite the opposite, as mentioned above, iMovie decompresses video to the DV codec, which is huge. If you can, you should avoid any unnecessary conversions. every conversion decreases quality and introduces artifacts that decrease compression efficiency.

To convert from MPEG-2 to quicktime (try the 3ivx for compression), use one of MacMPEG2Decoder, MacMPEG2Converter, QuickTime Pro with MPEG2 decoder component, DiVA, or MediaPipe, the last two being OS X only. DiVA is the fastest, especially on duals. Other options exist for MPEG2 to avi or mp4 in OS X such as ffmpegX, MEncoder, or openShiiva. Some of these also accept VOB files, but the only ones I'm sure of are DiVA and openShiiva (actually shiiva only accepts vobs I think)

those are off the top of my head. if you have any specific questions ask them, but try some of these first

Ok... so I rip to the hd with DVDbackup for os x.. then rename the .vob's to .mpg and from there I use MacMPEG2Converter to compress the mpeg2 to mp4 using the 3ivx codec... is that correct? After that I can connect the files together using qt6 and add the sound track back as well? Or is there a better work flow?

[Uncle Skeleton]

sounds like you're favoring OS 9 apps, but I thought iMovie 3 was OS X only...if you're in OS X, DiVA is the best choice (although now that I think of it the download is not available because of a liscencing issue, but in a matter of days it should be resolved). It is the fastest, and it will combine multiple VOB's into one QT mov file for you. For the others, you should avoid simply renaming VOB to MPEG-2, and instead use bbDemux. Demux is the opposite of mux, which is short for mulitplex, which means combining (in this case audio and video). demux'd streams (m2v and ac3 for most dvd's) can be combined or split with the cli tools cat and split (cat *.M2V > out.m2v). if possible, it's best to encode all at once. for one thing you can let it go on it's own (overnight?), and for another modern codecs keep their own track of how the file is compressing, to allocate more data to the more complex scenes, and they can't keep track between different files, but they can if you do it all in one file.

this is all explained better in other places. google "mac dvd ripping tutorial"

[Tyler McAdams]

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
sounds like you're favoring OS 9 apps, but I thought iMovie 3 was OS X only...if you're in OS X, DiVA is the best choice (although now that I think of it the download is not available because of a liscencing issue, but in a matter of days it should be resolved). It is the fastest, and it will combine multiple VOB's into one QT mov file for you. For the others, you should avoid simply renaming VOB to MPEG-2, and instead use bbDemux. Demux is the opposite of mux, which is short for mulitplex, which means combining (in this case audio and video). demux'd streams (m2v and ac3 for most dvd's) can be combined or split with the cli tools cat and split (cat *.M2V > out.m2v). if possible, it's best to encode all at once. for one thing you can let it go on it's own (overnight?), and for another modern codecs keep their own track of how the file is compressing, to allocate more data to the more complex scenes, and they can't keep track between different files, but they can if you do it all in one file.

this is all explained better in other places. google "mac dvd ripping tutorial"

OS X is what I want to use... you've given me a great new way to do this... thanks a bunch! I'll be trying it out tomorrow when I get off work!