MPEG-2 video/audio to MP4 or anything iMovie will import

[quella]

I'm new to the Mac world, and have done much of my work in Windows and linux. I have some old video that was imported from Pannicle Studio on Windows that is stored in mpeg-2 format. I would like to convert these .mpg files to anything that will be able to be imported into. I was wondering if anyone could give me any advice on the command line of ffmpeg (as I have a linux box with it also), or the ffmpegx options. Just not sure what iMovie will import as what I have tried (avi/dv) did not take. Ideas?

Quella

[Case]

Whatever format (.mov/.mp4/.dv) you import into iMovie, will be converted to DV anyway. So to reduce the number of transcodes, you may as well convert to a .dv stream (which is slightly different from an dv-in-avi-wrapper).

[quella]

Thank for the reply. I did seem to have issues when I tried DV (AVI) as iMovie did not see it as a valid import. If oyu use handbrake or some other tool to convert witg, can you provide any additional info on the conversion options I would need? I tried "ffmpeg -i mpeg2movie.mpg -t dv newmovie.avi" and that this not work. I tried Handbrake and told it to convery to quicktime, which iMovie liked, but it said that it would take 435minutes to create the images after the import. Ideas?

Quella.

[Case]

I would use the Mac GUI app ffmpegX or else MPEG Streamclip to convert MPEG-2 to DV.

ffmpegX sets a lot of options, giving a command line something like this:

ffmpeg -i infile.mpg -y -threads 2 -map 0.0:0.0 -f dv -vcodec dvvideo -b 25000 -aspect 16:9 -s 720x576 -r pal -g 240 -me epzs -qmin 2 -qmax 15 -acodec pcm_s16le -ab 1411 -ar 48000 -ac 2 -map 0.1:0.1 -benchmark outfile.dv

Substitute PAL for NTSC, frame size value and 16:9 for 4:3 as needed.

[quella]

I do have the latest ffmpeg on my Linux box where the video is stored, so I may just issue the command and then see if iMovie will import it. Thanks for the help and command line. I think the big thing I was missing were all the switches you provided. I have used ffmpeg in the past to convert avi to mp4, but never to convert mpeg2 so I can import to iMovie. Let me give it a shot and let you know; if you care.

Quella

[quella]

Here is what I get when I think I have made the corrections you spoke of...

ffmpeg -i 2004_AZ_Tape_2.mpg -y -threads 2 -map 0.0:0.0 -f dv -vcodec dvvideo -b 25000 -aspect 4:3 -s 720x480 -r ntsc -g 240 -me epzs -qmin 2 -qmax 15 -acodec pcm_s16le -ab 1411 -ar 48000 -ac 2 -map 0.1:0.1 -benchmark 2004_AZ_Tape_2.dv
FFmpeg version SVN-rUNKNOWN, Copyright (c) 2000-2007 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib --mandir=/usr/share/man --incdir=/usr/include/ffmpeg --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libogg --enable-libvorbis --enable-libogg --enable-libtheora --enable-libfaad --enable-libfaac --enable-libgsm --enable-xvid --enable-x264 --enable-liba52 --enable-liba52bin --enable-pp --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-gpl --disable-strip
libavutil version: 49.4.0
libavcodec version: 51.40.4
libavformat version: 51.12.1
built on May 30 2007 15:17:57, gcc: 4.1.2 20070502 (Red Hat 4.1.2-12)
Input #0, mpeg, from '2004_AZ_Tape_2.mpg':
Duration: 00:43:32.8, start: 0.222222, bitrate: 6315 kb/s
Stream #0.0[0x1e0]: Video: mpeg2video, yuv420p, 720x480, 5999 kb/s, 29.97 fps(r)
Stream #0.1[0x1c0]: Audio: mp2, 48000 Hz, stereo, 224 kb/s
Output #0, dv, to '2004_AZ_Tape_2.dv':
Stream #0.0: Video: dvvideo, yuv420p, 720x480, q=2-15, 25 kb/s, 29.97 fps(c)
Stream #0.1: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, stereo, 1536 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
[dv @ 0xdb5a14]Can't initialize DV format!
Make sure that you supply exactly two streams:
video: 25fps or 29.97fps, audio: 2ch/48Khz/PCM
(50Mbps allows an optional second audio stream)
Could not write header for output file #0 (incorrect codec parameters ?)
bench: utime=0.000s

[Case]

Mea culpa. I didn't research enough how ffmpegX works with ffmpeg. Apparently the developer made two compiled versions of ffmpeg to be used by ffmpegX: ffmpeg and ffmpeg2. That fact may be related to why the CL didn't work with your binary.

I now think this CL should do it right, tho':

ffmpeg -i infile.mpg -target ntsc-dv outfile.dv

(Found on the web and tested by me with the other binary.)

[quella]

I will give this a try when I get home. I will let you know the results. Thanks again. maybe it was that I did not try ntsc-dv rather just DV. and I think I named it .avi also. Thanks.

Quella

[quella]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, but we had a few issues around the house that kept me from trying your solution. I did get it to work and I'm converting the 5-6 old mpeg2 tapes to DV, but wow what a size difference. The mpeg2 is 1.3 gigs and when converted to DV it is 8+gigs! Ouch on the disk space, but good that now I can get the raw video into iMovie. Thanks so much for your help!

Quella.

[guns1inger]

DV is approx 13 GB per hour. That's the cost of our 'hobby'