iMovie and mpeg files

[brhmac]

How do I get iMovie to import mpeg files?

Thanks for the help.

[Horrortaxi]

By converting them to .mov.

[ifjake]

actually no outside conversion is necessary. iMovie will do it for you. you can either Import under the File menu and select your mpeg, or you can drag your mpeg file onto the little clip selection area. it'll take a couple of minutes or so to make the conversion, but it works. make sure when you're done you use the Share command, essentially Export, which enables you to adjust the quality and size to your liking.

[Grimace]

Originally Posted by ifjake

actually no outside conversion is necessary. iMovie will do it for you. you can either Import under the File menu and select your mpeg, or you can drag your mpeg file onto the little clip selection area. it'll take a couple of minutes or so to make the conversion, but it works. make sure when you're done you use the Share command, essentially Export, which enables you to adjust the quality and size to your liking.

You can't Import mpeg files thru iMovie. You need Quicktime pro to make the conversions.

[ifjake]

well it worked for me. i just did this like two days ago. i don't know maybe it's a new feature of iMovie 4 from the new iLife. but it is doable.

[Horrortaxi]

Sure enough. I just tried importing an mpeg and it worked. I would have sworn I tried it before and it didn't work. Maybe it's a new thing in iMovie 4 or maybe iMovie knows I have Quicktime Pro. Or maybe I was just wrong all along.

[live4ever]

Really, I just tried both a mpeg1 and a mpeg2 and it gave me an error on both files and said it was skipping them.

[brhmac]

And it won't let me import mpeg files. Get the error messages and the file gets skipped.

I have to use QuickTime Pro to convert them to mov files. The quality is awful and the file sizes explodes. It goes from 6 mb good quality to 100 mb pixelated like crazy quality.

Any ideas?

BTW -- Thanks to all who have responded.

[ftaok]

Originally Posted by brhmac

And it won't let me import mpeg files. Get the error messages and the file gets skipped.

I have to use QuickTime Pro to convert them to mov files. The quality is awful and the file sizes explodes. It goes from 6 mb good quality to 100 mb pixelated like crazy quality.

Any ideas?

BTW -- Thanks to all who have responded.

The question that needs to be asked is what kind of mpg files do you have? I know for a fact that iMovie 3 can import mpg files straight into the clip pane. However, if the file is muxed, the sound won't get imported.

I guess there are some types of mpg files that iMovie can't work with.

And regarding the file size. Of course converting a highly compressed mpg file to DV would look terrible and result in a huge file. That just the nature of the DV codec.

[WinterMute]

When you export in QT to .mov, make sure you use the Sorenson 3 codec, it'll give you decent quality with reasonable file sizes. Remember that MPG files are already heavily compressed, and they aren't of the best quality to begin with.

[BornAgainMac]

The reason the quality goes down when converting from MPEG to DV is because it has to resize the MPEG file to be the same dimensions. The MPEG file is grainy to begin, so when the file is resized to a larger size you see very blocky pixels. An an experiment, try using a MPEG file of the same dimensions of DV to see if you still have the problem.

By the way, when you resize a MPEG file down, you should see it look little bit sharper.

[Makosuke]

This is something I recently tried to do, and although there are some people claiming that it's easy, I haven't found that to be the case.

If you've got a MPEG4 file, QT of course has no problem with it. MPEG2 might work if you have the QT plugin, but that costs money from Apple.

As for MPEG1 (generally .mpg files), Quicktime sort of supports them; it plays muxed MPEG1 (that is, MPEG1 with the audio and video tracks mixed together--the standard format) just fine. And, Quicktime knows how to read and export both MPEG1 video, and MPEG1 audio (usually .mp2 or .mp3 audio files--those are actually just layers of MPEG1 audio).

Unfortunately, QT does not, so far as I can tell, properly export muxed MPEG1 files--it'll give you the video with no audio, or vice versa.

You can demux an MPEG1 file using another program, though, and then recombine the video and audio in QT Player (pro version), then export that. You could also theoretically have a non-muxed MPEG1 file, but I don't think it would be standard--it'd actually be a Quicktime (.mov) or AVI container with MPEG1 audio and video tracks.

Getting back to iMovie, I iMovie 4 (which uses QT for everything, so none of this is surprising) definitely won't import a muxed MPEG1 file--it just returns an error. You can open the .mpg in QT Player, export to a DV stream (it'll probably look awful, but that's not QT's fault--just low resolution like ftaok said), then have iMovie import that (or put it in the media folder and have it automatically add it to the clips pane). I've tried the same with iMovie 2 and 3, and it didn't work with those, either, nor would I expect it to until (unless) Apple decides to add full muxed MPEG1 support to Quicktime.

Now, if somebody else has figured out a way to get iMovie to properly import .mpg files with both video and sound, I'd love to hear it, but it sure didn't work for me. Horrortaxi--are you sure what you got iMovie to import was really a valid MPEG1 muxed video, and not a video-only stream or something with the wrong file extension on it?