[JustADude]

I'm still a MAC newbie, but I've got iMovie, QT Pro, and FlipForMac and I still lack the ability to convert to the MPEG-2 format. I am really suprised that these tools lack this capability, but cie la vie.

I would like to find out if Roxio Crunch will allow me to convert MOVs, MPEG-4, and other formats over to the MPEG-2 (mpg) format.

Do you know if this is possible?

Thank you for any feedback and insights you can provide.

[tsantee]

Crunch does not encode MPEG 2. Why do you want that format? Other than for use with video DVDs it isn't as good as the MPEG 4 variants. Toast encodes MPEG 2 very well as part of authoring a video DVD. So does iDVD. I believe ffmpegX is popular encoder for MPEG 2 files.

[JustADude]

Crunch does not encode MPEG 2. Why do you want that format? Other than for use with video DVDs it isn't as good as the MPEG 4 variants. Toast encodes MPEG 2 very well as part of authoring a video DVD. So does iDVD. I believe ffmpegX is popular encoder for MPEG 2 files.

Thank you very much for your post. Can you explain how to get iDVD to produce an MPEG-2 output?

Also, does Toast simply output an *.mpg file or are there some other steps.


Thanks again for your feedback.

[tsantee]

Thank you very much for your post. Can you explain how to get iDVD to produce an MPEG-2 output?

Also, does Toast simply output an *.mpg file or are there some other steps.
Thanks again for your feedback.

Both iDVD and Toast do the MPEG encoding as a step in authoring the video DVD. There are a couple ways to get the MPEG 2 video separated. One is to prepare everything to the point you are ready to burn the DVD but choose Save as Disc Image from the File menu instead. This is the same with iDVD 5 or 6 and Toast. When the disc image is finished you can extract the MPEG 2 video by mounting the disc image on the desktop and using one of several applications to extract the MPEG 2 file. One way is to use the Toast 7 or 8 media browser and drag the title to the Video window. The MPEG 2 files is written to the Roxio Converted Items folder. Other popular application that do this are MPEG Streamclip and Cinematize. There are others as well.

iDVD works with DV video and MPEG 4 whereas Toast can encode MPEG from with many different video formats.