MF6: Need help converting MPEG4 file to AVI or MPG for MF6

aligillon · Post by **aligillon** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 7:49 pm

Does anyone know of a good, free video file convertor software that i can download somewhere?

I am using MF6 to make a picture presentation of my wedding. I would like to include 1 short 10 minute video within this presentation, however, the video is an MPEG4 file and therefor not compatible with MF6. I have dowloaded several "FREE" programmes to help convert to a .avi file or a .mpg file, but none of them turned out to be 'free'. They only convert half the file, then you must subscribe. I did find one completely free programme, however, after converting the quality of the video was poor and not useable.

If anyone can help with this it would be appreciated.

Regards
Ali

Post by **Ron P.** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 8:06 pm

Would the free program you have tried be Super ?

What is the resolution of your MPEG-4 video file? If it is less than the 720 x 576 (PAL) or 720 x 480 (NTSC), required by DVD specs, then you are going to lose quality.

aligillon · Post by **aligillon** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 8:50 pm

vidoman wrote:Would the free program you have tried be Super ?

No, it was something else. I cant actually recal the name of it, its since been uninstalled. Would you recommend that i try converting my file using SUPER?

vidoman wrote:What is the resolution of your MPEG-4 video file? If it is less than the 720 x 576 (PAL) or 720 x 480 (NTSC), required by DVD specs, then you are going to lose quality.

Sorry, i'm a novice, i'm unsure how to locate the resolution of the mpeg4 file. It was filmed on a new good quality camcorder. When i play the mpeg4 file in VLC, the quality is superb. After converting to .mpg file, when i played it in in VLC the quality was very poor. I dont know why this is.

Sorry i cant give better information, i'm a novice at this. Its getting frustrating as we only have one short film of our wedding and i'd really like to use it on my picture presentation.

Any idea what i can do about this?

Thanks
Ali

Post by **Ron P.** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 10:41 pm

I do use Super and it does a good job, however I've not had the occasion to convert an MPEG-4, just to convert say a FLV or some other to MPEG-4.

A new good-quality camcorder tells me that it may be a High-Def camcorder? If so then it is not merely a conversion issue. It may be using the AVCHD/h.264 compression. This is very different than Standard Definition. I'm not well versed on this.

With your video clip selected in the timeline, right-click and select Media Clip Properties. You can then post them here, so that we will know what we're dealing with and how to properly direct you..

aligillon · Post by **aligillon** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 11:14 am

Sorry, this is getting to weird for me. When i originally played the file direct from disc the picture was super sharp, crystal clear, perfect. Now, if i insert the disc and play the file straight from the dvd the picture quality is poor. The sharpness has gone and the colour is much weaker.

How can that be. It is only me who uses this laptop and i did not change any of the display settings!

Can anyone think of any reason why this might happen.

P.S. it opens automatically with Quick Time.

What a headache

aligillon · Post by **aligillon** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 11:18 am

Also, i have downloaded 'super'. Here's another dumb question:

After choosing my settings, i right click on the area to drop in a multimedia file. After inserting the mpeg4 video clip, my question is................ how do i start the conversion?

Post by **Ron P.** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 11:47 am

aligillon wrote:Also, i have downloaded 'super'. Here's another dumb question:

After choosing my settings, i right click on the area to drop in a multimedia file. After inserting the mpeg4 video clip, my question is................ how do i start the conversion?

In the bottom left there is a button labeled Encode (Active Files). That's the Start button.

aligillon · Post by **aligillon** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 7:23 pm

vidoman wrote:In the bottom left there is a button labeled Encode (Active Files). That's the Start button.

Thanks vidoman..... for some reason 'super' was not recognising me as the administrator, therefor the Encode tab was not being displayed. Got that sorted now!

I have heard from a friend the reason my video file is now showing a compressed, poor quality picture has to do with codec's? He believes this probably happened when i tried to use a Quick Time converter to convert my file from an mpeg-4 to a .mpg file. I am clueless on this subject however, can anyone give me a link to a site where i can download a very good codecs pack to see if that fixes my problem.

I find it very damn strange that this is a private film, not copyrighted, and i cannot play the thing because of 'codec's'. What is that about?

Post by **Ron P.** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 7:57 pm

I think I ran into the same issue when I installed Super on my Vista laptop. I had to run it as Administrator.

I find it very damn strange that this is a private film, not copyrighted, and i cannot play the thing because of 'codec's'. What is that about?

First you need to understand that CODEC is an acronym, for COmpressor-DECompressor. So to view any compressed video, if it be MPEG (1,2,4), WMV, DivX and so on, there must be a means to decompress the file, and to create the myriad of video files, you must use a compressor. So as many file formats as there are, there are at least that many, actually many, many more, CODECS. Some are better at doing their thing then others.

So if you do not have an MPEG-4 codec installed on your machine, then it would be difficult to play it. Now I'm really, really apprehensive about pointing you in the direction of codec packs. These are most often than naught, thrown together by people that really don't know what they're putting together. Many of the codecs included in codec packs, will conflict with each other, not to mention cause conflict with codecs already installed on your machine. Some will be older versions, and replace newer, better ones that may already exist on your computer. So my advice is to not install codec packs. Instead install only the codec that you may need.

To illustrate the numbers of codecs I ran a Google search on just MPEG-4 codecs. Click HERE for the results.

Now which one of those you may need, I really don't know. It could be the one that handles DivX (mpeg-4), or how about the newer AVCHD or h.264.

Could you provide the make/model of your camcorder? We can research the camcorder and find a solution that way..

aligillon · Post by **aligillon** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 6:29 pm

Hi vidoman

Thanks for trying to help me with this. I am unsure of the make of the camcorder. However, what i do now have is a copy of the film straight from the camera. It is a .dv file. I can view this with no problem on my laptop, the quality is good, as it should be. Trouble is, Ulead does not support .dv, also it is 5.6 GB in size.

I cannot convert it using 'super as 'super' does not recognise the .dv file.

Do you have any idea where i should go from here? I would like to convert it into a .mpg file, this way i can edit the film in Windows Movie Maker, also Ulead MF supports .mpg

Post by **Ron P.** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 12:58 am

The only one that I can find that uses the *.dv extension is a QuickTime video file, that is a Digital Video File. So you may need to use QuickTime Pro to convert the file.

Ulead does handle DV (digital video files), however in the "avi" wrapper.

Out of curiosity, you could duplicate the file to another location on your system. Then on the copy file, change the extension from *.dv to *.avi, and see if DVDMF, or Super will accept it.