MPEG-2 with QT Pro?

[rotuts]

Hello
I had a threqad from a site that carefully explained all the 4 MPEGs but lost the ref.

is MPEG-2 the DVD standard? or the HDTV?

I can't get iMovie to make a QT movie in MPEG-2. is this correct?

Im trying to make some "DVD" quality QT files from my own imorted movies into iMovie to save wasting a DVD-R as I just want to save this on the HD.

iDVD does not seem to make DVD-RW's

any ideas?
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thanks rotut

[crusty]

1. Yes Mpeg 2 is the standard DVD as yet there is no HDTV DVD.
2.No iMovie will not make MPEG 2, as far as I know iDVD converts to mpeg2 before it burns DVD but will only accept QT files. I consider the quality of both iMovie and iDVD to be sub-standard.

It sounds like you have QT Pro if so get the MPEG2 plugin and export directly from QT Pro to make your MPEG2 files.You could also use Compressor to mpeg MPEG 2 DVD compliant files, I still believe MPEG2 on the MAC platform has yet to come up to par in quality but works well enough for most people.

[bilestyle]

im gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you.. the mpeg-2 quality (and not just from compressor) is definitely up to par with that of PC.. and it has been for some time now....

[crusty]

Your disagreement is taken, but I have compared footage captured through a realtime hardware based MPEG2 (MPX300 and SD-2000) series card and captured through FCP as uncompressed 10 bit and authored on a MAC DVDSP 3 abd I truly can see a difference so much so that I would never give them to paying clients. Most homeusers and even agency people would never see the difference, I certainly can.

Of course this is just my opinion.

[rotuts]

thanks for this insight and perspective.

is MPEG-2 for QT Pro ( I have the pro) somthing Ill have to buy? from apple? this is not a free add on?

from a DV iMovie file to MPEG-2 what is the size change involved?

Id just like to get DVD quality out of my iMOvie file without going thgourh wastging a DVD-r to put it back on myh HD.

thanks rotut

[lordsmurf]

720x480 high bitrate MPEG2 on MAC looks pretty good. Lesser res and bitrate, I'll agree, room for improvement. This is more a statement about limited software and limitations IN that software, as available for MAC. Nothing against Apple.

[TugBoat]

thanks for this insight and perspective.

Seems they have their own agenda....

The QT MPEG2 Exporter comes with FCP or DVDSP. I know of no other way to obtain it. You can supposedly use iDVD to create a DVD image by using the method described here;
http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=23370

Direct link to files;
http://forum.rpc1.org/download.php?id=352

I've never used this method.
Good Luck

Edited to fix the freakin' links.
Also, The QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component is not an encoder, it's for Playback only;
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/products/mpeg2playback/faq.html

[miksu]

Apple's MPEG2-component for DVD Studio Pro is at least decent, or even better. It's just quite basic. But...
There are lot of other encoders, I like to use Bitvice for MPEG2 encoding. Cleaner is terribly slow (at least was on OS-9), but has great quality.

FFMPEGX is almost free, fast and has really good quality with proper settings.

There are equally good MPEG2 encoders for Mac and PC. User can spoil the result on both platforms with incorrect settings etc. Have seen enough bad PC/MPEG2 encodings as well as great encodings done on Mac.