Sony .MPG files

[BuzzLovesTea]

OK, so a while back a was bought a sony handycam that records on to a harddrive in .MPG. These files seem to be a bit of a problem for my mac: Importing straight to Final Cut Express, which is really where I want them, just doesn't happen. Going though iMovie '09 I can at least get them into the machine, but the quality is so bad it's barely worth it. I tried converting the files with various bits of downloaded software and nothing came out. I was told I needed some kind of QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component, which I downloaded, and now the files will play in my Quicktime, but with no sound and some serious motion lines, so again, barely worth it. Playing them though VLC I have sound, but still awful quality. With the MPG-2 Playback thing I can convert them into pretty much anything now, but still it all comes out looking unusably bad.

So my question is: Is there anyway to get these files, looking relatively decent, into Final Cut - or even iMovie, if it will actually allow me to do some editing! I don't mind paying for software, so long as I know it will do the job, but I just want this footage!
Any help would be much appreciated!

Thankyou!

[rumplestiltskin]

ClipWrap should be able to fix the problem. We use it simply to re-wrap the audio and video streams into something QT can deal with on its own, then we convert to ProRes for FCP or Media100 using MPEG Streamclip.

If ClipWrap doesn't work, then see if VLC can play it. If so, then Handbrake (using VLC's codecs) should be able to transcode it into something usable.

[Herve]

just a notice: for FCE, use AppleIntermediateCodec (you don't own ProRes codec )

MPegStreamClip will does the job (if you bought the mpeg2codec), nicely
QuickTime does not handle AC3 audio (if your file contains it), so it's normal that you have no sound during direct playback.
MPSC will convert the audio part too, to a quicktime compliant format.

bye