Best way to get MPEG2 to reasonable computer viewable file?

[briandugas]

I'm a little out of touch here, been a while since I posted here.
I'm used to capturing analog video straight to MPEG2 352x480 or 740x480, and a bitrate of 4.5Mbps or 8 Mbps, for DVD purposes.
I captured some video in a MPEG2 740x480 @ 4.5Mbps format, because I thought these people wanted a DVD training video. That would have been too easy. Now they tell me they want this on a CD, and it needs to be viewable on a computer. Well, I'm not used to doing this.

Should I covert my video straight to MPEG 1, 640x480 ? What would be a good bitrate? The video is just camcorder footage of someone giving a lecture. Not a lot of movement. What about audio? I captured 48000Hz at 256. I forget the terms that go with audio. Anyway, I'm looking for a simple list of things I should do to get this video in a comparable viewing quality to what I have. I don't know if I should go with DivX, because the people watching the video probably won't have that on their computers. Thanks for any help.
Brian

[jlietz]

Missing information....How long is the video?

[SingSing]

Find out what player applications are installed on the playing computers ?

If they have good players like PowerDVD, Nero showtime, WinDVD, then they can play the mpeg2 files directly, as long as the CD can hold them.

[briandugas]

Each source video is about 1 hour 15 minutes.
I've seen people cram 2 hours of DVD into one CD size file of about 700MB. Of course, the video was DivX, but the picture quality was awesome for watching on a computer. That would be great for me, I just don't know what to do about the fact that people watching this video won't have the DivX decoder on their computer. I guess I could tell them how to download and install it.

[greymalkin]

nah man just encode it to .wmv

If it's a windows machine it will play it in media player. You can get it to fit on a cd and should have decent quality.

If it's just a lecture/speech you could get away with mono/96kbps on the audio track. Speech doesn't require much.

[SingSing]

Installing divx player on other people PCs is not a good idea. Pick a format that all PC can play natively like mpeg1, or wmv.

[briandugas]

Should I just use the Windows Movie Maker to convert it to WMV? I tried using Ulead Video Studio 10 to convert it to WMV, but it only lets you use the presets. The 320x240 was nice, but I'd like to go a little bigger. The file size was nice as well. What program should I be using? Thanks.

Oh, SingSing, I have no clue what programs will be installed on the computers used to watch the videos. These are state agencies with old computers. WMV is probably my safest bet.

[Baldrick]

Yep, use wmm or wme. It supports mpeg2 if you have a mpeg2 decoder installed.

[andie41]

I have been looking for a way to make video clips small enough to send by email, retain decent quality, and easy for the recipient to play. I think as suggested, WMV is a good option - much smaller files size compared to mpeg2. If you don't need to edit (and use something like Movie Maker), I have recently started using WMNicEnc - simple, but lots of options; it does require a simple avisynth script, but a program like FitCD will make that for you.

[briandugas]

Well, I got the Windows Media Encoder working, and man that program responds slow to my actions. However, it didn't take more than 3 minutes to encode a 1 minute file. Anyway, the output looks like garbage. I guess I'll give the WMNicEnc a try.

[Baldrick]

Must be something wrong with the mpeg2 decoding i WME. Same with WMM?

[briandugas]

Yea, WMM started crashing on me after I installed WME, so I can only use WME. This is weird.

And I just tried WMNicEnc. Same looking result as the picture above.

[Baldrick]

Must be something wrong with your mpeg2 decoder...check what you use with Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DE1491AC-0AB6-4990-943D-627E6...displaylang=en ? Try change if several decoders or try install some other.

You could also convert your mpeg2 to dv-avi or lagarith with Virtualdubmpeg2 and then convert it to wmv.

[briandugas]

Well, it turns out my WMV files were OK. I tried one on a different computer, and it played fine. It's just my computer that won't play and WMV files properly. And my WMM still crashes. I may have to wipe out all video related software and start over. But for now, the WME is working. It will read the MPEG2 file and convert it to a WMV file. Thanks for all the help.

[SingSing]

Uninstall your current Windows media player, and reinstall wmp 9 and try again.

[briandugas]

I'll give that a try tomorrow. I'm about to head home for the day, and I'm in the middle of converting a 1.5 hour video, which will take 3 hours to do, and I'm half way done. I don't want to kill anything. I'm assuming to uninstall Windows media player through the Add/Remove Programs--> Add/Remove Windows Components.