Using a G5 iMac with OSX.3.9

I have converted some .avi files (tv shows) to mpg. The problem is that as avi files they were about 350-450 mb. As mpg they are 1.95gb. My son has told me that this is because there are a lot of un-needed files attached to the mpg. However he doesn't know how to find or get rid of them on a Mac (he's a PC user). Help anyone??

Second problem. When I convert some avi files to quicktime using a AV to QT utility I sometimes get a message telling me that the audio is in an unknown format and therefore the converted file will not have any audio--not a good thing for watching later!! Again any help will be appreciated. And "No" I do not want to change from the Mac to a PC!!!

Try to use a different technique.

First of all, AVI and MPG are two very different formats. AVI is a more compressed format. It usually looks blurry and pixilated. MPG on the other hand typically looks much better. This is because the frame rate of the video is almost double that of the AVI format. Therefore MPG files will always be much bigger than AVI files. The problem with the sound I think is caused by your conversion tool. I'm no expert on this at all, but I think that you may have better results if you rip the audio to MP3 from the origonal video and convert the video seperately. Then reinsert the audio once you have converted the video. Be sure to search on Google too. Good luck.

deepblue

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Doing the sound like that makes sense however being a newbie can yoou tell me how to do it?? Thanks

In reply to deepblue:
Both are container formats, AVI can be pretty much everything.

Nonsense, see above.

That's utter nonsense. Nowadays, AVI usually contains
MPEG-4 encoded video data which can offer far superior
quality than most MPG files will have. It's a question
of encoding quality anyway. MPEG-4 can look as good as
DVD video or better (if the original video source isn't a
DVD but something better of course).

Most MPG files contain MPEG-1 video data which usually
looks like tihs compared to something better like MPEG-2
or MPEG-4. A few MPG files contain MPEG-2 data which may
look better than a highly compressed MPEG-4 video but it'll
be much larger in size (4x or more).

WTF? The frame rate? Do you even know what that is? Maybe
you meant bitrate but that isn't true either. Videos typically use a frame rate of 24, 25 or 30 frames per second.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the format.

This is not true and even if they're bigger, this doesn't
mean they look better. MPEG-1 looks far worse than MPEG-4
at the same file size. For example, an acceptable MPEG-1 takes at least 10 MiB per minute, MPEG-4 looks fine at 6 MiB per minute and usually even much better along with a higher resolution.

why the hell would you want to convert the avis to mpeg in the first place??? converting somthing will onley make it look (or sound)worse . what your trying to do is compeatley pointless and stupid, just keep the avi files as avi files, as my grandpa sed: "dont fix it if it aint broke" .


btw D-VHS blows dvd ,laserdisc ,vhs and especaley the crap you download(avi/mpg/wmv files) out of the water!

That applies only to certain conversions. If you convert highly compressed data to a less dense encoding you'll often lose nothing - and gain nothing except possibly compatibility, of course. There's also the term "transcode". Such a process usually doesn't cause any loss in quality it'll just put the data into different format so that your player of choice can handle it.

Even if the conversion is lossy, people usually exaggerate. The data you find on P2P is usually highly compressed any way and often poorly encoded. Sometimes it's above average and it gets better over the years but for home use or watching something on your crappy NTSC TV set, the little loss caused by converting is often - not always - negligible.
If you're that picky about quality - hey it's probably available in top-notch quality for a reasonable fair price.

Hint: The above contains a nice cute joke.

D-VHS? Tape? Ugh. Where can I purchase *anything* on D-VHS? That was dead before it was available. Tape has one use and none else: backups.

Laserdisc? Completely dead since DVD and the quality of DivX/XVid/MPEG-2/MPEG-4 can be much better than that. Often it's not really eventhough close. Well it depends on what you download. Crap stays crap at any resolution and color depth anyway.

VHS? Ugh, even MPEG-1 is as good as that and at least it'll still look the same in 5 years in contrast to the then-toasted VHS tape.

The problem of the original poster is likely just choice of the wrong tools. He should give mplayer, xine or VLC a try. Those - especially the first - play virtually any format there is - albeit I have to admit that may not be true on non-x86 platforms like a PPC Mac. However, those are free tools so it won't cost more than a small amount of time.

you can get lots of movies on dvhs...i know theres atlest 200 titles or so(cant remember any) but it is getting more popular and more stuff is being relesed on it, i think(hope) it will become just as popular as dvd. the reson it blows everything els out of the water is because the movie on the tape is un-compressed, one tape cartridge holds about 400gb thus the best possibul picture qualety other than the origanal FILM itself, thats somthing dvd/bluray will never be able to do . and there making the tape itself out of better mateials/chemicals and have specail coatings so the tape wont degrade over time or "shead" its magnetic particals from being played over and over. it should last just as long if not longer than its disc counterparts. and it dosent ever get scratched.



as for my last statment "converting somthing will onley make it look(or sound) worse", i should have sead : convering somthing will onley make it look/sound worse or stay the the same, it can never make it look/sound better .


where can you get dvhs movies? : i dont know of any retail place but if you google for it theres lots of sites that sell them, and some that rent the movies and the d-vcr.

the reson im ranting about dvhs is cuz i think its a much better solution for watching movies than the current things like dvd. im not advertizing for it or anything ,i just like it and think its cool.

but still? if the avi files work fine with quicktime player or whatever you use on a mac , why bother converting it???

I've just looked at D-VHS with Google. Looks like I've underestimated it a little. Well but 200 titles isn't really that much. Just for comparison: I have a little more than half that much in my cupboard and that's far from covering any kind of category. There bazillions of classics and titles I still want to see. Even if those 200 are the most popular titles from IMDB that's hardly enough to satisfy customers. Reencoding or even re-digitalising thousands of movies is quite expensive anyway but if they would simply "re-package" DVDs as D-VHS I'd rather go for the cheap DVD.

It's actually pretty old as well, it was released in 1998 and still isn't more than an elitist system. I mean it's advanced to DVD in a few aspects e.g., it can do HDTV 1080i but in my opinion the media alone (tape) disqualifies it. It's much bigger than an optical disc, less forgiving, sensitive against magnetism, to big too be installed into a PC etc.
For the industry, there's of course only one thing that matters: the price. I dunno but I cannot imagine that a tape would be cheaper than an optical disc, especially with repect to pre-recorded media. That's more a less a killer factor.

It's also 44 GB not 400 GB. So it's much more than a DVD but (probably) less than the upcoming generation of optical media. It's also using MPEG-2 which is getting aged and in the progress of being replaced by MPEG-4 codecs. Oh and D-VHS doesn't even record digital from analog media, thus such recordings it'll rot just like your VHS from the previous millennium.

To take advantage of HDTV resolutions you need an appropriate screen resp. TV set which takes another 1000$. Hardly worth it (or affordable), considering what lo-fi crap people get from P2P networks and are happy with.

That said, I wonder what the mistake was here because from 1998-2000 D-VHS it could have easily killed DVD before it took really off.
Bad marketing or what?

Regarding the topic: The problem with AVIs on a Mac is probably a missing codec. However, if it's possible to convert them then, hell, convert them put them on a DVD-RW watch them but archive the AVIs. Maybe next time you want to watch them you'll have the appropriate codec and if not you can always convert them again.

The original poster is converting for a reason. I'm wondering if they are converting so they can burn it to cd/dvd to watch on TV instead of the computer. In that case it will end up as an mpeg1 or 2: VCD=mpeg1, SVCD & DVD=mpeg2. Resolution: vcd = 352 x 240 (pal 352x288), svcd = 480 x 480 (x 576 pal), standard pal/ntsc DVD = 720 x 576 / 720 x 480.

I don't know much about other formats being used on dvd as set-top dvd players with this ability has only been a relatively new introduction.

I_Have_No_Account seems to know what they are talking about with video formats.

bitstream-surfie has made a great suggestion about obtaining other tools. Another good site to try is http://www.videohelp.com/ & also http://www.videohelp.com/convert.htm I would recommend you have QuickTime Pro. Obtain as many 3rd pary codecs you can such as DivX, XviD, 3ivx, & the ones recommended by QuickTime (go to QuickTimes preferences & use the Find & Install 3rd party plug-ins.) At least one of these 3rd party ones via QT link is very good but that's for size reduction without noticeable loss of quality for streaming purposes (similar to DivX.) (3ivx is inconsistent for playback for my liking.)

I had a discussion about a similar but slightly different topic here: http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...threadid=35612

I use several & various tools as you'll see in the above link but, MPeg Streamclip (free) is very handy & will maintain the audio format if you choose so.

Yes some programs such as Toast will create a temporary conversion file which should later be deleted (I would not use Toast to convert by choice normally.)

In summary, it's difficult to give you specific advice without knowing exactly what it is you want to do. If you just want to view on computer then better to retain the original file as is. To burn to disk to view on TV then you should have QT Pro. (I use FCP & DVD SP for my work.) Hope everybody's suggestions are a help to you Dublin 1.