Apple program needed to edit mpeg-1 files.

[rgibbons]

I am a newbie and trying to find inexpesive apple compatible software that will allow me to edit mpeg-1 movies from a digital camera.

Quicktime pro will play the movies but not edit them.

I also tried a demo of Adobe Premier but it strips the music out when you attempt to import them.

I need something I can lighten and other simple edits.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[GMaq]

Hi,
MPEG Streamclip should work quite nicely for you if you already have QT Pro anyway, it will do simple editing etc.

[rgibbons]

Thanks GMag. I was able to use MPEG Streamclip to convert the MPEG-1 to an MPEG-4 and edit it in QT Pro, but found that I could not save the edited version in QT.

After lightening the video and adjusting contrast, I tried both a save as and export. Both resulted in an unedited version.

Any idea why I could not save the edited version.

I also tried a trial version of Adobe Premier. It would save the edited version, but it turned a 2 gig mpeg-1 into a 5 gig AVI file which was too big.

Any suggestions?

[celtic_druid]

You could try AVIDemux. Runs under OSX I believe, if that is what you mean by Apple compatible.

[redwudz]

Welcome to our forums. For Mac specific questions, you would get more answers in our Mac Forum. Moving you.

[AntnyMD]

If you open MPEG1 files in iMovie HD, iMovie will convert them to DV automatically and you can use this software to edit. If you have a Mac, it should have come with a version of iMovie already installed. MPEG4 is not really good for editing. MPEG video (1, 2, 4, H.264) are meant to be delivery formats.

[rgibbons]

I tried IMOVIE, but when I opened the MPEG-1 in IMOVIE it was missing the sound track.

[celtic_druid]

I wouldn't say that H.264 isn't useful for editing. Supports 4:4:4 and lossless encoding. Not that anything Quicktime based would handle either.

DV on the other hand is lossy and only supports 4:1:1 (MPEG-1 is only 4:2:0 anyway).

Anyway AVIDemux should be able to edit MPEG-1 without re-encoding it. The smart copy function I think only works for MPEG-4 and MS MPEG-4 though so you could only cut on keyframes.

[rgibbons]

I tried AVIDemux, but it will not run on OS 10.3.9 or 10.4.

[celtic_druid]

Other people seem to be able to run it and there are binary packages. What build did you try? Did you compile it yourself?

[rgibbons]

I just clicked the link at this page:
http://avidemux.berlios.de/download.html

It mounted on the desktop fine, but when I double click it to launch, it attempted to launch and then failed. Same thing happened on both machines.

I also tried downloading from both sites.

I will try updating my stuffit program and see if that helps.

[bucho]

You need to have X11 installed as it's not an aqua app. You can find X11 on your install DVD (or here, couldn't find it on Apple's site: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10464 ).

[jpschuck]

Thanks GMag. I was able to use MPEG Streamclip to convert the MPEG-1 to an MPEG-4 and edit it in QT Pro, but found that I could not save the edited version in QT.

After lightening the video and adjusting contrast, I tried both a save as and export. Both resulted in an unedited version.

You don't need to use Quicktime. You can do all the editing on your MPEG-1 file (cuts and trimming) with MPEG Streamclip. Then under the "Export as MPEG-4..." menu item there is an "Adjust..." button where you can adjust lightning, contrast, and saturation... If you don't want to export to MPEG-4 you can also choose .mov or .avi.