Program Saving .mpgs But Not Recognizing Them

[jacki]

Hi -

 

I just bought this product and have a problem I can't solve. Roxio's online chat guy "went to research" and disconnected me. Apparently, he didn't have an answer either. Maybe someone here can help.

 

I can play my VHS tapes and capture them. They save on my computer as .mpgs and when I click on them, the info says they are movie files. They are also the size of movie files. I can then load them into Toast and burn them onto a disc. However, when I try to play them back - either from the computer or from the disc - I get an error message saying the file is not a movie.

 

I have been able to make quicktime movies out of the tapes. But I can't do anything but that. iMovie isn't recognizing the .mpgs either.

 

Any advice welcome. Thanks!

[tsantee]

iMovie won't recognize the MPEG 2 video unless you choose the option at the end of encoding to send it to iMovie. It then will be converted to MPEG 4 for iMovie.

 

You should be able to play the .mpg video with VLC Media Player. Give that a try.

[jacki]

Thank you. I figured out that if I make a Quicktime movie out of it, I can then load that into iMovie and edit. For some reason, I remember a glitch sending it directly to iMovie yesterday, but I will try that again now just to check.

 

Considering this is a product for Mac, you would think it would save in a recognizable format or there would be some instructions for converting the .mpg, but I guess not.

 

Thanks again.

[tsantee]

Thank you. I figured out that if I make a Quicktime movie out of it, I can then load that into iMovie and edit. For some reason, I remember a glitch sending it directly to iMovie yesterday, but I will try that again now just to check.

 

Considering this is a product for Mac, you would think it would save in a recognizable format or there would be some instructions for converting the .mpg, but I guess not.

 

Thanks again.

I'll provide a little background. The MPEG 2 format that this devices encodes is the one used by video DVDs. So it does make creating a DVD easier. But it makes editing harder because MPEG 2 is not a format that works with video editors. The best you can hope for is the ability to trim off sections you don't want. If you want to edit a lot of the movies you capture in iMovie, this isn't the easiest way to do it. The full version of Toast (or Popcorn) can convert the .mpg video (and play them) at any time. Roxio left that out of the Toast 9 Basic, unfortunately. You also can use a freeware application called MPEG Streamclip to convert the .mpg video to h.264 for import to iMovie. It does require purchase of Apple's $20 QuickTime MPEG 2 Playback Component.

 

ElGato sells an application called Turbo.264 that also does this conversion and there is an option for a USB stick that speeds up the conversion. I frequently use mine.

Edited January 20, 2011 by tsantee