Widescreen MPG has forced 4:3 and is slow on Windows Movie Maker

[MrSaturn33]

My Sony Camcorder only seems to record in the MPG format, and this wouldn't even be visible in Windows Movie Maker 2.6 if it weren't for Combined Community Codec Pack which, although only playing audio for the preview in WMM, shows the video with audio in the timeline. There's just one issue: My video is widescreen 16:9 (720x480) and for some reason it is squished (not cropped) into a 4:3 aspect ratio, as well as seeming to run slower/have a far lower FPS. Shown below, the smaller window is the video showing normally on Windows Media Player and the maximized window is Windows Movie Maker which shows the video incorrectly.

http://i684.photobucket.com/albums/vv207/MrSaturn33/MPGProblem.png

Trying to save the video with the default best quality for playback on my computer option makes the quality so bad it's literally unwatchable and flips the image upside-down. I don't understand why my camcorder can't just shoot files as .avi. This is very frustrating and I don't see what program I'd have better luck with if there isn't some magic codec that can fix all of this...Thanks,

MrSaturn33

[Baldrick]

WMM is probably the worst mpeg2 video editor. It's just luck if you get it to work fine. Convert the mpg to dv-avi or some lossless codec instead with for example avidemux, format factory, etc.

Or get a mpeg2 editor like mpeg video wizard dvd or if you just need to cut mpg2cut2.

[MrSaturn33]

WMM is probably the worst mpeg2 video editor. It's just luck if you get it to work fine. Convert the mpg to dv-avi or some lossless codec instead with for example avidemux, format factory, etc.

Or get a mpeg2 editor like mpeg video wizard dvd or if you just need to cut mpg2cut2.

Would lossless video compression result in a video of the exact same quality? I wasn't aware you could convert a video and not lose at least some quality.