mpeg made on pc won't play on mac (1 Viewer)

[Sam E. Torres]

i know absolutely nothing about codecs or anything. honestly, all i really know is that the file was made on a pc, and i managed to play it on a different pc, but not on my mac.

what are the basic things i'm supposed to know and how do i go about fixing this?

 

[JeremyErwin]

You may have better luck trying to play it with videolan. Are you sure it's a mpeg file?

 

[Sam E. Torres]

i just downloaded it, but i can't get it to play on imovie. i should have said this before--i'm trying to put these files on imovie, to then add them on a dvd with idvd.

 

[Ken Chan]

Apparently iMovie does not support multiplexed, or "muxed", MPEG files, where the video and audio is interleaved together. That's the format used to distribute content, not for authoring.

With some tools and utilities, you can "demux" the content and then create a new QuickTime MOV file that has the video and audio in separate tracks, which iMovie does support (or at least it did when I tried it just now). You could do it with:

- QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component, $20
- MPEG Streamclip, free
- QuickTime Pro, $30

There may be alternatives or ways to avoid paying the $20 and $30. The workflow is pretty simple, no problem if you're doing just a few files. I could tell you how. Another approach would be to do some of the conversion work on Windows, or even create a file on Windows that the Mac can read directly, although there are some variables there too.

 

[MarkHastings]

Ken's right, I run into this annoying issue a lot. I don't know why Mac doesn't support MUXED MPEG2 files.

There is some kind of 3rd party utility you can purchase that allows you to use MUXED MPEGs in QT, but I'm kind of offended that Apple wants me to pay for this. :frowning:

Basically my work around for this is to separate the file. Create an M2V file and a WAV (or AIF) file, then put them back together in your Mac app.

EDIT: Here's the link that talks about the MPEG-2 playback component for QuickTime:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/

 

[Sam E. Torres]

see now i'm wondering if there's a program i can play the files on and export it into a dv tape, then import it into imovie...

any ideas?

by the way, thanks a lot for the input so far guys. i really appreciate it.

 

[MarkHastings]

First, you'd need some sort of decent output on your video card...and even then, you'd be outputting a compressed MPEG to DV, then bringing it back in as a new MPEG with more compression. Probably not the best way to go, but if it's your only way....

What about the PC? Do you have access to it? What generated the MPEG? Can you use that same app to reoutput it into something the Mac can read? like a DV file??

 

[JeremyErwin]

you might be able to use mplayer.

 

[DaveF]

iMovie only imports DV video (to my knowledge). Use the (free) MPEG Streamclip to convert your video to DV format, which iMovie can import. I've used this program to convert MPEG1 video from my digital camera to DV format; iMovie imports the converted video without issue.