Converting .MPG to something playable

[crypticcreation]

I had burned footage from a mini-vhs camcorder tape to a cd using a vhs-to-cd converter then uploading to my pc then to a portable hard drive!!! Now i'm trying to edit the footage on my iMac but i'm just noticing now that it's in .MPG format....soooo i'm 100% lost now!!

Ps. The files will play right now which is weird (in quicktime player) but there is no sound what-so-ever!!! i'm hoping i can just convert the files over to something more compatible to get my sound back!!

THANK you so much!!!

Brad

 

[-DH]

YIKES! CD video is typically MPEG-1, which is the oldest and probably the poorest quality codec used for video compression. You could try to convert the MEPG-1 files with MPEG Streamclip (freeware), but it won't be pretty due to all the compression. The reason you're not hearing the sound in QT Player is due to the fact that the MPEG file is multiplexed; MPEG Streamclip will handle that for you during the conversion process.

You're best bet quality and workflow wise would be to re-digitize the VHS footage through a compatible DV device (camcorder, VTR or converter) so that you'll be capturing it as DV (.dv), which works natively in iMovie.

-DH

 

[crypticcreation]

Ahhh man!!! You think they make a usb cord for such an old style of camcorder though??
i appreciate your help!!!

 

[ChrisA]

Find a mini DV camera. Transfer the footage to miniDV then use fire wire to get the stuff into the Mac.

If you continue along the way you are going even if you get it to work the quality will not be worth all the effort. Most DV camera will work in "pass through" mode where an analog signal will be sent out the firewire port. But I figure it's best to record to tape so you have a modern format backup on DV tape.

 

[crypticcreation]

Find a mini DV camera. Transfer the footage to miniDV then use fire wire to get the stuff into the Mac.

If you continue along the way you are going even if you get it to work the quality will not be worth all the effort. Most DV camera will work in "pass through" mode where an analog signal will be sent out the firewire port. But I figure it's best to record to tape so you have a modern format backup on DV tape.

I actually found a digitizing machine that will transfer my mini-vhs footage to a harddrive which i could then use to edit and what not! Thanks for all the input folks!!!

Cheers

 

[10mississippi]

transfer from vhs follow up

crypticcreation,

Please elaborate on your solution.

| I actually found a digitizing machine that will transfer my mini-vhs
| footage to a harddrive which i could then use to edit and what not!
| Thanks for all the input folks!!!

 

[trek1500]

I had burned footage from a mini-vhs camcorder tape to a cd using a vhs-to-cd converter then uploading to my pc then to a portable hard drive!!! Now i'm trying to edit the footage on my iMac but i'm just noticing now that it's in .MPG format....soooo i'm 100% lost now!!

Ps. The files will play right now which is weird (in quicktime player) but there is no sound what-so-ever!!! i'm hoping i can just convert the files over to something more compatible to get my sound back!!

THANK you so much!!!

Brad

Download this free program isquint. You can get it at isquint.org. Check out the You Tube video on directions and it works like a dream! It converts your MPG file to MPEG4 which should play fine!

 

[trek1500]

I had burned footage from a mini-vhs camcorder tape to a cd using a vhs-to-cd converter then uploading to my pc then to a portable hard drive!!! Now i'm trying to edit the footage on my iMac but i'm just noticing now that it's in .MPG format....soooo i'm 100% lost now!!

Ps. The files will play right now which is weird (in quicktime player) but there is no sound what-so-ever!!! i'm hoping i can just convert the files over to something more compatible to get my sound back!!

THANK you so much!!!

Brad

I have a ton of analog video that I had transferred onto an older PC using this converter box and it formatted it to MPEG format which of course won't play on my Macbook Pro. After researching this online I found this "free" program that convers MPEG to MPEG4 which "is" recognizable by most PCs.
It's a piece of cake and works like a dream! Now i have a bunch of precious family video on my IPod through syncing with iTunes. Apple was smart when they designed iLife.

 

[10mississippi]

Several solutions

see below

 

[10mississippi]

Several solutions

I have come across and used several solutions regarding transferring and converting video. They are described below.
Background
1) I had previously used the all in wonder card to transfer old VHS tapes to my PC hard drive. The output was .mpg (mpeg-1), except for the last file which for some reason I saved as .avi. This worked well in Roxio and Pinnacle Studio, until the PC ceased to function properly.
2) Then came the iMac. I hooked up the old PC data hard drive to a USB port in the iMac, transferred the files to the iMac, but couldn’t view them, because the software already installed would only read MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 encoded files.
3) The AVI couldn’t be read because Apple QuickTime was missing a component that would play it.
Solutions
1) I used VLC to view the mpg files. This worked well, but didn’t solve the true need which is to edit and burn to a DVD.
2) Handbrake (.91 for Tiger and .92 for Leopard) easily converted the mpeg-1 files to mpeg-4. Now they could be used in iMovie and iDVD.
3) I did not convert the .avi file this way. Instead, I hooked up the VHS video camera with that tape to my recently purchased canon DV tape camera, and the DV tape camera to the iMac. Through this Rube Goldberg set up I was able to transfer (again) the video to a hard drive. (For my camera a setting need to be configured as “analog to digital”). This worked great too.
Observations
Two hours of VHS video transferred to mpeg-1 via all in wonder was 4GB. When I converted it through Handbrake to mpeg-4 it was around half the size.
The avi file was 45GB.
Two hours of VHS video transferred via Rube Goldberg approach was 15GB. (One hour of DV tape transferred directly to iMac was also a lot.)
When I initially used the all in wonder card, I had problems with audio video synchronization. ATI told me to change some settings (relating to acceleration) depending on which came first (sight or sound). This worked (although the problem/solution was different depending on which video camera created the tape). With iMac, there wasn’t any issue for the Rube Goldberg solution.
All of the above worked for home videos. I did not try the solutions on copy protected material.