[Terri]

I'm doing some movies for the web and they need to be .mpg format. My originals are in .mpg with sound and video.

Basically I need to save short movie clips of my original .mpg files and change the size as well.

QuickTime seems to only export MP4 and I can't seem to find anything that does .mpg files.

[Macola]

I can't vouch for this personally, as I've never tried it, but how about this app:? http://www.biermann.org/philipp/mpegcut/

[dtriska]

MPEG is a distribution format, and is not meant to be editable.

That said, what apps do you have to work with? Final Cut Pro? iMovie?

[Terri]

Does FinalCut Pro do mpg? Seems like spending a grand just to be able to slice up an mpg is a bit expensive.

I see lots of ones for the PC platform
Like this one,
http://www.visiblelight.com/mall/catalog/mpegedit/

[Millennium]

MPEG is a huge pain to edit; you'd be better off exporting it to QuickTime's Video or Animation codec (both are lossless, so you won't lose any quality in this step) and then re-encode to MPEG when you're done (which will cost you some quality, but not as much as if you'd encoded to a lossy intermediate format).

As for MPEG-1 encoding, there are basically three options on OSX. The first is to buy Cleaner; this will set you back $600, but works great. The second is to buy Toast; its MPEG encoder is very high-quality, but very limited in terms of options. You can only encode VCD-spec files, which are of a specific resolution and bitrate, but at that particular resolution and bitrate Toast's encoder beats the pants off of anything else out there.

There's also a freeware tool out there called Movie2MPEG. This is much slower than Toast or Cleaner, but it gets the job done, and the price is right. Check for it on VersionTracker.

[Terri]

That would work except that I loose the audio track when I export to a mov file.

[dtriska]

Originally posted by Terri:
Does FinalCut Pro do mpg? Seems like spending a grand just to be able to slice up an mpg is a bit expensive.

I didn't say you had to buy it. I asked what you have already.

[Weezer]

the only app that can edit MPEG-1 files directly is EyeTV. However, it would be tricky to get your mpgs into the application itself. When it records a show, it produces a reference file in its own folder for that show. I've manually changed the mpg in that folder to a different one, and it still opens. So you would have to download the EyeTV app, and then get each reference file, and change the name of the mpg file to whatever it was supposed to be, ex: 000000000462019a.mpg

[Uncle Skeleton]

there's also ffmpeg to encode mpegs.

to get the audio out of your mpeg for editing, use bbDemux to get an mp2 (== m1a) audio file, and convert to aiff with MAD

[Truepop]

Final Cut Pro does not do MPG well. When I import them since the tracks are one it deletes the audio and you have to render the video.

I guess you could export as audio in QT then also export as video and bring them together in FCP.

I am not sure if Final Cut Express can do it. I don't even know what Final Cut Express can do.

Could you use QT Pro?

[Terri]

This is really sad.

I was really hoping that Finalcut Pro would at least do MPG files since I can't seem to find any other Mac solutions.

While looking for a MPG editor I did come across a few editors that were for the PC platform and were under $100.

Since I will be needing to do a lot of MPG files in the coming months it looks like I will finally have to breakdown and by a cheap PeeCee.

I'm going to look a little more first. Maybe there is something in X11. Last night a friend told me that the old QuickTime under 9 did MPG so I'm going to look into that as well.

[macmike42]

Totally offtopic, but Truepop, when I saw your sig image, I fell out of my chair!

[Terri]

Anyone know if Film Gimp supports MPG?

[Millennium]

I don't have any experience with MediaPipe, but you might want to check it out. It looks like it should be possible to set it up to automatically demux the MPEG, recode the video to Video or Animation, recode the audio to AIFF, and then plop these back into a QuickTime movie, which you can then edit.

Fortunately, recoding that back to MPEG when you're done is much easier; any of the tools I mentioned before should be able to do that.

[theory]

What is film Gimp?

The way I edit MPG is first export them to DV then edit
using iMovie. But then again I only do this for fun not for anything
serious (mix and matching between the World of Warcraft and Lord of the
ring trailer gave me hours of crazy fun ).

[Truepop]

Originally posted by Terri:
Anyone know if Film Gimp supports MPG?

Film Gimp from my understanding is just a smart frame touch up tool. It's not meant to be used to edit.

Like I said it is my understanding, correct me if I am wrong. say there are artifacts like hair or sratches in the film after transfering it from say 35mm to a digital format. you can use film gimp to find and paint them out.

[offtopic] thanks for the comment on my sig. Its funny yet few have noticed. [/offtopic]

[typoon]

Couldn't you use Quicktime Pro? You can edit clips with that. How bout importing the movie into iMovie and editing then exporting again.

[Anomalous]

Originally posted by Truepop:


[offtopic] thanks for the comment on my sig. Its funny yet few have noticed. [/offtopic]

Well, I posted a message a while ago saying your sig was funny. However, I also pointed out that it violates MacNN guidelines (it is animated, and I think it is too tall), and you have yet to do anything about it.

[Truepop]

Originally posted by Anomalous:
Well, I posted a message a while ago saying your sig was funny. However, I also pointed out that it violates MacNN guidelines (it is animated, and I think it is too tall), and you have yet to do anything about it.

I am going to asked a mod in feedback about it.