changing the format

[bluegrassbowhunter]

My camera records on MPEG 2 format & I'm wanting something (software) that converts the mpeg2 to an mpeg 4 or an AVI format....anybody have any suggestions on which one I need ....

Thanks
Mark

[Tom Mussatto]

Are you talking about a DVD cam or a digital camera that records video to memory cards?

If the former you can play your DVD (the video will be .vob files) in your DVD desk top player and hook the A/V out to a camcorder or miniDV tape deck with passthrough capabilites. The cam or deck will make the conversion to AVI which can then be pulled into an editor.

Or, you can get a software program that makes the conversion. There's a bunch of these out there from "free" to a couple hundred dollars. Do a Google search and pick one.

If video is on a memory card you can pull these videos directly into an editing program on your PC that recognizes MPEG2. Once in the editor you can render the video out in any format your editor supports.

MPEG2 is a highly compressed codec and you are going to lose quality of both video and audio when you convert these files to another format regardless whether from a DVD cam or a digital camera on a memory card. If you end up going back to DVD you will lose even more quality through more compression.

DVD cams and video on consumer memory cards are destination formats and not good acquisition formats. They are made to plug your cam or camera into a TV or PC and view, not edit or change. It can be done but it's time consuming and the end results are poor.

[bluegrassbowhunter]

Thanks for the info Tom.....it's a hard drive camcorder(JVC EVERIO)....the format that it records on now(MPEG2) is way to big for me to do anything with as far as e-mailing or putting on a image hosting site to post on here....

[Tom Mussatto]

If file size is important you don't want to convert to AVI for sending through E-mail or post on the net, that will be even larger than MPEG2. You need to compress and encode to either .wmv or .mov.

You will have firewire output on that harddrive cam so you can hook your cam up to a miniDV or Digital 8 cam with passthrough capabilities through a firewire cable. Set your cam to play and the receiving cam to record. The receiving cam will convert your video to AVI. You then will be able to pull that video into your PC and use an editor to convert the footage to .wmv or .mov video. If you are using a PC and running Windows XP you should have Windows Movie Maker bundled in that OS which is a basic editor that can convert the AVI to .wmv. If you are running a Mac you should have iMovie bundled in your OS which can convert to .mov.