MPEGs captured on PC won't open in QT on Mac

[mkirk]

I work on both the PC and Mac platform and desperately need some help. I have been capturing video content directly to DVD compliant MPEG-2 streams using my PC (and a hauppauge card). The results are fantastic but my burner lives over on my Mac.

When I try to open any of the .mpg files I captured and/or encoded on my PC using Quicktime Pro, I get the following error:

"couldn't open the file "filename.mpg" because a software compenent needed by the movie can not be found."

I've tried importing the files into Quicktime, iDVD, DVD Studio Pro... you name it. I'm a bit of a video newbie on the Mac platform so would appreciate any help from the forum. Am I missing something? Do I need to install some special codec? Is the file extension a problem? HELP!

[SCB]

In order to open MPEG-2 content in QT Pro, you need to buy the MPEG-2 component for QT. It's $20 at Apple's site.

[mkirk]

That's over and above the $29 I paid for QT pro?

Also, I'd like to import these into either iMovie or iDVD to burn to DVD. What's my best strategy? Should I be able to drag these to Toast and burn to DVD? I don't yet have toast and am worried that because I can't open with any of my Movie applications I won't be able to burn directly.

Will I be able to burn PC .mpg's to DVD-R without any other conversion?

mk

[Macnewbie]

Yeah, what scb said.

MPEG-2 files can't be opened in IMovie or iDVD. You can get the mpeg-2 playback component for quicktime for $20 (yes that is in addition to the cost you paid for QT). Then you can open the movie in QT and export to a .mov file which you can then burn using iDVD. The only bad thing is that the component can't decode AC-3 audio. So if your muxed mpeg-2 stream has AC-3 audio, you'll get no sound.

[mkirk]

Thanks MacNewebie...
One final question- does this mean I'll lose any quality? If I understand this correctly I'll basically be opening the .mpg in QT then re-encoding it to .mov to open and burn using iDVD or DVD Studio Pro or to manipulate using iMovie. Is that right? Will I lose quality?

What a pain! So despite the fact that I can encode directly to .mpeg 2 dvd quality streams I need to re-encode before I can burn?

[Macnewbie]

No loss in quality. Open up the movie, choose export from the file menu, choose movie to quicktime, click options, choose JPEG A with best quality.

[jchansen]

Actually, if you have DVD studio Pro, you should be able to import these files in. But, if they are program streams (audio and video) you have to demux them first. I think BBdemux is the way to go, but I haven't really used it much. Once you have a separate audio and video file, import them into DVD SP and build the disk.

You _will_ lose quality if you decode and reencode, because the first MPEG compression introduced some artifacts, and another will do the same. Further, the second encoding is at the mercy of Apple's encoder, which is constant bitrate, and not the best looking. I would bet that they were originally encoded with VBR.

iDVD is great for consumers because it does the encoding for you. iDVD is bad for some people because it does the encoding for you. Since you already have the files encoded, use DVD SP. But again, it won't use program streams.

A further thought: if the files you have are VOB, then you may just be able to drag them all onto toast, provided that the DVD was authored correctly to begin with.

You only need the QT MPEG2 codec if you want to play the files from QT, or export to some other format.

Jeremy