I am trying to convert .mpg files taken with my digital still camera - Sony Mavica FD-95 - into a file format that will work in iMovie2. I have QTPro and I can convert them to a .dv file, which iMovie will import, but the audio is gone. I've experimented in QTPro with other settings, formats, but still no audio. How can I convert the files and still retain the audio?
Any help, please? Many thanks.

Les Bowles

Thanks to all for the help. I appreciate the assistance. I'll try to mux it up a little.

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[This message has been edited by Les (edited 10-12-2000).]

[bizzare]

Sorry for not getting to your question sooner. I have tried many times to convert .mpg files to DV streams (or any format) using the QuickTime player. The MPEG 1 format is not 100% supported in QT 4 (you cannot export sound). The public preview of QuickTime 5 is QuickTime 4 with a face lift,(more or less) and you still cannot export MPEG 1 audio. I do not have a fix for this problem, and as you can see from the lack of replies, the other members do not either. I'm going to transfer this topic to the QuickTime forum, and maybe someone there can help you. If there are still no replies, I'll dig deeper and try to find a solution for you.

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-Bizzare

[Zephyrus]

I never actally saw the question... Anyhow, the answer is as follows:

If the audio in your MPEG 1 file is muxed, then you have to unmux your audio first. They way I do this is just takig the audio out of my computer and recording it on a second computer. I then transfer it back and re-encode the audio into a DV stream. A lot of people do not have a second computer, so the solution is to dump it to a VCR. I know this is messy, but it has to do with the fact that MPEG 1 audio is muxed into the video and can not be extracted by QT. If anyone has any other ideas I would love to hear them, but that seems to be the easiest solution to date.

Zephyrus
[email protected] www.alphavideo.com
beta - www.alphavideo.com/beta

[jcarr]

Originally posted by Zephyrus:
I never actally saw the question... Anyhow, the answer is as follows:

If the audio in your MPEG 1 file is muxed, then you have to unmux your audio first. They way I do this is just takig the audio out of my computer and recording it on a second computer. I then transfer it back and re-encode the audio into a DV stream. A lot of people do not have a second computer, so the solution is to dump it to a VCR. I know this is messy, but it has to do with the fact that MPEG 1 audio is muxed into the video and can not be extracted by QT. If anyone has any other ideas I would love to hear them, but that seems to be the easiest solution to date.

MPEG Audio Split (included with Sparkle) will demux an MPEG1 file, but is not all that reliable or elegant. A better solution would be nice.

Perhaps theis functionality could be added to QuickTime itself?

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I'm cookoo for Cocoa Apps!

[bizzare]

Here's the solution:
http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/Forum9/HTML/000727.html

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[Buckaroo]

Originally posted by bizzare:
Here's the solution:
http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/Forum9/HTML/000727.html

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Where does this link suppose to go? I clicked on it and it goees nowhere. I need this solution. I can't get Quicktime to export Audio with my .mpeg files.

[bmhome1]

Try using MPEG Works or ffmpegX.

[Nap]

Freeware solutions are BBDemux to split out the audio and Audacity to convert the demuxed audio to AIFF so that QT will let you edit the file. You will need at least OS 9 to run BBDemux. If you are on an older system you can usually use the Split mpeg file in the Sparkle archive but make sure the mpeg name has fewer than 31 characters. It adds some extra characters and if the name is over 31 characters it crashes without telling you why.
Again for older systems SoundApp will convert the mpeg audio to AIFF. If all you want to do is convert to a non-mpeg format (not edit) then first convert the video with QT and the audio with either Audacity or SoundApp, then open the audio file in QT, copy the video to the clipboard, go back to the audio and use Add Scaled to put the two tracks together. You have to have converted both tracks to non-mpeg format first or this operation will not be possible. Be sure you do the Add Scaled with the video on the clipboard and not the other way around.
If you want to edit before converting to other formats it is best to convert the video to a non-lossy format like Component Video or NONE and do the editing to that file. AIFF is already non-compressed so it is fine to use it for editing. Combine the files as described above and edit away, then for the last step do any converting to compressed formats like Sorenson3.

[Nap]

I hadn't used the MPEGSplit Fat program that comes with Sparkle for a while and gave a bit of wrong info. That program actually adds the characters .00 to the file name for some reason so you must be sure that the file name (including the obligatory .mpg) totals 28 characters or less. Otherwise it will cause a very nasty crash without giving any error messages. Other than that it works well and I can remember using it on an old Performa 68k machine with no problems under OS7.2 or so. I also have used it under 8.6 with no problems. Under 9.22 it did give some silly message about needing to be updated but the split streams worked ok. Besides, I doubt any one with access to OS 9 or OS X will bother messing with it.

[trumpeter]

Have you tried using Toast Titanium's export facility? I've converted some muxed MPEG2 files directly to DV that way.

Best wishes, Neil