[macgyvr64]

I ripped some mpeg-2 video files from a DVD and would like to edit in them in Final Cut, but it doesn't do mpeg-2. I'm going to use DiVA to re-encode it, but what codec should I use? Since I'm going to be editing it, it should be great quality. I tried using "None", but that was a mistake; it made a 1 GB file into a 37 GB file..they weren't kidding..there was really no compression. MPEG-4 looks blocky... Any suggestions?

[Jacke]

You can try 3ivx at the highest quality, MPEG-4 video but with a decent encoder. You might get better results with the new 4.5 version.

[macgyvr64]

Will FCP be able to edit that, though?

[scottiB]

From the tech specs:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/specs.html

I'd encode in DV/DVCPRO50-NTSC for FCP. You're coming from MPEG-2 at probably 4-5Mbit/sec. That's pretty compressed. Any codec you use won't be pretty.

[Uncle Skeleton]

you want a codec with no temporal compression. That means DV, JPEG, Animation, Component, or a few others. The choice is up to you, but keep in mind that FCP, iMovie, and most consumer video cameras chose DV to be their native format for a reason; it's the right balance of compression, quality and performance (speed).

[beanbag]

Whatever you use, it's gonna look like crap once it's edited and re-compressed. Going from MPEG to quicktime does not do the video quality any good at all.
The best possible solution would be to use Apple uncompressed or any other lossless solution that FCP supports (blackmagic, Voodoo, etc) This will only work if you've got a SCSI RAID array capable of supporting uncompressed media, IDE or S-ATA drives won't handle it. If this isn't an option, go for DV-25. It's fully supported by FCP and it may survive the re-encoding process and still be watchable. Why do you want to edit MPEG media anyway?
DV50 is out if you're using regular HDs, for the same reason you can't use uncomressed.

[macgyvr64]

Originally posted by beanbag:
Why do you want to edit MPEG media anyway?

It's MPEG-2 ripped from a DVD, I can't help that :-P

[beanbag]

Originally posted by macgyvr64:
It's MPEG-2 ripped from a DVD, I can't help that :-P

are you going back to a DVD once it's edited?
If it's just basic cut-paste editing you can do it with QT pro, keeping it in MPEG-2 format all the way. It'd look just as good post-edit then anyway!

[macgyvr64]

It might be going to CD..depends how I feel at the moment I go to export, and how decent the quality is of the 700MB file. I didn't think QT Pro could cut/paste mpeg-2?

[beanbag]

It can if you've got the MPEG-2 player:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/products/mpeg2playback/

Only works on 'Muxed' tracks - otherwise you gotta edit the video and audio serately (you'd never get them to sync afterwards if you tried)

[macgyvr64]

I just tried copying and pasting some mpeg-2, and nothing happened...I don't think you can do it like that..

[macgyvr64]

I have the Apple mpeg-2 component. My tracks aren't muxed, though..I split a VOB file with bbDEMUX and got two two elementary streams :-/ Is there an app that can rip a muxed mpeg-2 file from a VOB?

[beanbag]

what version of QT are you using? I've just upgraded to 6.4 - it's stopped working for me too (worked about 2 weeks ago on 6.3). Must be something to do with the decoder...I'll play around with it this w/end

[macgyvr64]

6.4 here, too

[Uncle Skeleton]

QuickTime could never edit MPEG media. It pretened it could in version 4, but when you saved, it was the same old MPEG file wrapped in a mov file, with metadata indicating the edits you had made. In QuickTime 5 they disabled the menu commands when MPEGs were open, but you could still do the same old fake editing if you remember the keyboard shortcuts. In QT 6, those too were disabled. You can get around this and go back to the silly QT4 way if you use MissingMPEGEdit from

http://homepage.mac.com/rnc

but doing all this won't help the original poster here because you still have to re-encode the whole thing when done if you want to do anything more than watch it in a QuickTime-based player