MPEG2 to AVI conversion.

[fl3tty]

Sooo, ive got heaps of video formatted in MPEG2 that i want to edit, but it wont allow me to in Windows Movie maker, and i wouldnt know what other good programs to use..
Ive downloaded the program "Open Video Convertor" which then required me to download the DivX codec, and that successfully converted a few that i was happy with, but now all of a sudden its stopped working and i dont know why, so alas i then moved on to the program VirtualDubMod, but all that i convert using this come out bad quality, and ive tried different compressors, but no luck.....
Can someone pleaseeeee just tell me what to do?? Im going nuts.

[AlanHK]

Converting your video to another format always means a quality loss.

If you are just cutting and joining mpeg and want mpeg at the end, get an mpeg editor.
There are a number listed here: https://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/video-editors-mpg-dvd
Several of these are freeware, I use Womble's MPEG-VCR, which isn't free, but it does an excellent job, keeps sync and does not degrade video as some do by needlessly reencoding.

[fl3tty]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. If i were to purchase software id be looking for one that has a lot of editing, video and transition effects. Does the one you recommended have these?

And im planning to burn the video to a DVD once ive eventually completed editing it.. so would it be best to keep it in MPEG2 for this or does it not matter?

Cheers.

[guns1inger]

Womble Mpeg Video Wizard DVD will do most of what you want. You won't find a dedicated mpeg-2 editor with the sort of feature set of Premiere or Vegas. If you want that, it costs - you buy Premiere Pro, then you buy the (expensive) Mainconcept real-time plugin. Personally, a huge range of transitions are very low on my list of criteria, as out in the real world, only two or three have any real use. Lots of fancy wipes and stars and the like are basically just tacky crap.

[FulciLives]

I use MPEG-VCR by Womble and it works well but then again I am only doing simple "cut edits" ... mostly trimming the start and end and cutting out commercial breaks. I've also used it to merge two or three MPEG files (back in the day when I did LaserDisc captures and did each side of the LD as a separate capture). It worked well for that as well.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[AlanHK]

Thanks for the reply. If i were to purchase software id be looking for one that has a lot of editing, video and transition effects. Does the one you recommended have these?

And im planning to burn the video to a DVD once ive eventually completed editing it.. so would it be best to keep it in MPEG2 for this or does it not matter?

I haven't used the more expensive editors, but Womble's MPEG-VCR is fine for me. It can do some simple transitions or just flush joins. They have a demo.

MPEG2 is what you need for DVDs, so if it's DVD standard (correct resolution, basically), you should not change that.

But if you want to apply special effects -- changing colours, overlays, etc, then you will have to reencode, so you might as well convert to AVI and use VirtualDubMod. But if not, just stay in MPEG.

MPEG-VCR doesn't do authoring; for that I use GuiForDVDAuthor, for making the menus and putting it all together, but there are many other choices.

Womble also has some more feature-laden, and expensive, apps.