QuickTime Mov to Mpg1

Erik Olsen · September 7, 2004

Hi,

Does anyone have a utility, or know of one, that will convert QuickTime MOV to mpeg1 format?

Thanks,
Erik Olsen
828.817.4319

darryl · September 8, 2004

Alas, there are many variants of MOV, since QuickTime is just a "container", and the files themselves can be encoded with any variant of audio and video codec.

That being said, if the MOV came from a digital camera, it's most likely using the MJPEG codec. The Canon PowerShot series produces AVIs with this codec.

Anywho, on Windows, your best bet is probably TMPGEnc. I've gotten decent results out of it.
http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main2.html

There's a plug-in that allows you to read MOV files.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/4942/svcd.html

On the Mac, I've had good luck with ffmpegX, which is a GUI front-end to various Unix open-source video/audio tools. There's a bit of manual downloading and installing that needs to be done (although it provides links and instructions on how to do so), but in the end, if you stick with the presets (VCD is a good bet), you end up with good results.
http://homepage.mac.com/major4/

One of the best overall sites for video conversion information is
http://www.videohelp.com

It's got a nifty search tool that lets you specify which format you want to convert from/to, and it pulls up appropriate how-tos and tool guides.

Have fun, and feel free to ask any further questions here.

--Darryl

James S · August 20, 2005

I have a good converter but need to compress. Is there any good free compressors out the to use once I convert?.

James S · August 20, 2005

Nobody huh?

peestandingup · August 20, 2005

Yes, ffmpegX for Mac is the way to go. It rocks! Just need to play around with the settings for a while.

Rex, ffmpegX will also let you compress the file while you convert it as much as you want.

James S · August 20, 2005

I have fxMpeg writer. Is that the same as fxmpegx?

Also I am on windows.

peestandingup · August 20, 2005

No, ffmpegX is for Mac only. Im not sure about that program you are using. But, most video converter programs I have seen usually have a setting that lets you tell it how big you want the ending file to be.

Have you looked at all the settings?

James S · August 20, 2005

The only settings I have are.

Method:
Fastest or Best Quality
Color Depth
AV Bit Rate:
Min
Max
Aspect Ratio:
W
H

Frame Rate

It is the program smugmug offered ion the video help page.

Alan M. Carroll · August 20, 2005

I've had some success with Virtual Dub. Getting the compression to work was definitely the most difficult part.

peestandingup · August 20, 2005

rex wrote:

The only settings I have are.

Method:
Fastest or Best Quality
Color Depth
AV Bit Rate:
Min
Max
Aspect Ratio:
W
H

Frame Rate

It is the program smugmug offered ion the video help page.

Is there a box that says something like "Video Bitrate kbit/s"? There you should be able to type in different numbers to lower the bitrate, thus shrinking the file.

Try clicking on AV Bitrate then choose Min & see what happens.

Or, if you cant get it, you can send the file to me using www.yousendit.com and I can shrink it down for you. Whatever you want to do is cool

James S · August 21, 2005

peestandingup wrote:

Is there a box that says something like "Video Bitrate kbit/s"? There you should be able to type in different numbers to lower the bitrate, thus shrinking the file.

Try clicking on AV Bitrate then choose Min & see what happens.

Or, if you cant get it, you can send the file to me using www.yousendit.com and I can shrink it down for you. Whatever you want to do is cool

I wouldn't mind sending them to you but it is like 9 videos.

peestandingup · August 21, 2005

Yeah, that is alotta videos.

But I looked at that program you are using and it looks like you can make the "AV Bitrate" lower, but im not sure because there is a min & max and it doesnt look like you can select those.

Is this what you are seeing? If it is, try lowering the AV Bit Rate & see what happens.

DavidTO · August 21, 2005

peestandingup wrote:

Yeah, that is alotta videos. But I looked at that program you are using and it looks like you can make the "AV Bitrate" lower, but im not sure because there is a min & max and it doesnt look like you can select those.

Is this what you are seeing? If it is, try lowering the AV Bit Rate & see what happens.

I believe those are grayed out because MPG-1 does not support variable bit rate. Could be wrong, but I think so.

Barb · August 21, 2005

DavidTO wrote:

I believe those are grayed out because MPG-1 does not support variable bit rate. Could be wrong, but I think so.

I'm using ffmpegX and was able to finally (after taking a lot of time trying to figure it out - haha - I had never redacted clips from a full-size movie, compressed, etc.) create four clips and uploaded them. My first try resulted in some rather large clips (9+mb), so I went back into ffmpegX and reduced the bitrate and now have around 3mb files. My question, however, is, what is the lowest bitrate one should use to still get decent quality? The quality isn't awful, but I just chose a bitrate and am wondering if there is a minimum one should use?

James S · August 21, 2005

peestandingup wrote:

Yeah, that is alotta videos. But I looked at that program you are using and it looks like you can make the "AV Bitrate" lower, but im not sure because there is a min & max and it doesnt look like you can select those.

Is this what you are seeing? If it is, try lowering the AV Bit Rate & see what happens.

I tried lowering that to around 1000 and nothing happenend. It didn't even convert.

peestandingup · August 22, 2005

DavidTO wrote:

I believe those are grayed out because MPG-1 does not support variable bit rate. Could be wrong, but I think so.

Nah, thats not true. I do it all the time with ffmpegX on OS X.

DigitalDaze wrote:

I'm using ffmpegX and was able to finally (after taking a lot of time trying to figure it out - haha - I had never redacted clips from a full-size movie, compressed, etc.) create four clips and uploaded them. My first try resulted in some rather large clips (9+mb), so I went back into ffmpegX and reduced the bitrate and now have around 3mb files. My question, however, is, what is the lowest bitrate one should use to still get decent quality? The quality isn't awful, but I just chose a bitrate and am wondering if there is a minimum one should use?

If you are posting them on Smugmug, then they should stay under 8MB in size. ffmpegX is a little tricky & it will probably take you a couple of tries to get the correct file size. There is also an "Options" tab that lets you fine tune things a little more for those times when you are getting an odd looking video file where the audio may not be matching up with the video.

rex wrote:

I tried lowering that to around 1000 and nothing happenend. It didn't even convert.

Rex, I checked out the website of that program you are using. It looks as if this progarm wont let you adjust the Bitrate on Mpeg-1 files for some reason. At least, thats what it looked like to me. Here is what I saw:

James S · August 22, 2005

peestandingup wrote:

Rex, I checked out the website of that program you are using. It looks as if this progarm wont let you adjust the Bitrate on Mpeg-1 files for some reason. At least, thats what it looked like to me. Here is what I saw:

Thanks for the help. Maybe I can convert to MPEG-2 and compress then convert to Mpeg-1?

peestandingup · August 22, 2005

rex wrote:

Thanks for the help. Maybe I can convert to MPEG-2 and compress then convert to Mpeg-1?

No problem

. Sorry about the program not doing what you want it to do. You can try that conversion workaround and see what happens. Let us know how it works out for you. Good Luck!

QuickTime Mov to Mpg1

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