[dabigkahuna]

I really need help with this one. Big problem with my videos and the macbook (I can PLAY them on the mac, but that's about it).

The videos come from my Sony 7.2 mega-pixel camera (DSC-P150). The videos it makes are pretty good (640x480 mpg file). The videos it makes can be set to two versions of 640x480. One is "standard" and one is "fine". I use "fine" because I want the best possible videos. Maybe this is part of the issue.

Okay, to the problems:

1. In iTunes, I ran the option to make an iPhone version (just to see hat happened). When I played that new version back in iTunes, there was no sound!

2. Neither the original files nor this flawed iPhone version would sync to the iPhone anyway.

3. Since I wanted to combine a bunch of short clips of various events, I went to iMovie - but when I look at the original files, they are grayed out so they can't be loaded.

4. I wont through this with the one to one person who tried various things, supposedly to somehow convert the file so it would work. Nothing did. Finally he said I need QT Pro to convert them. Got that and tried things today.

5. I used Export to make copies of the file in these formats: mp4, mov (quicktime), m5v (for iPhone), avi. NONE had sound and I think all had lesser quality than the original. There were also the following differences

Original MPG file: 640x480 (90.8 mb)

Mov file: 640x480 (132.7 mb)

AVI file: Didn't give the size where I looked, but appeared to be 640x480 (33.8 mb)

M4V file: 480x360 (7.8 mb)

MP4 file: 352x288 (3.9 mb)

All but the original file could be imported into iMovie, but without sound, who cares?

So, is there a solution out there? I want to keep the size and quality and, of course, keep the sound!

Not being able to create these movies into a bigger movie will be a disappointment, but it would also mean I'm stuck for a long time until I buy a new camera that does videos - not gonna happen for a long time!

[crazy4laptops]

no sound on all formats means a codec is missing

i'm not the mpg expert but check out free-codecs.com

[dabigkahuna]

Don't know much about codecs, but I've been searching for more info on this particular problem with the Sony videos from that camera - seems everyone has the problem. A couple comments gave "solutions" - but I think they were untested solutions (just what the poster thought might work). The ones I tried did not work. One person mentioned that the videos were "mixed mpg1s". Don't know if the "s" is for plural or part of the name.

I'll see if I can find any reference to the Sony cameral videos and codecs when I get home from work.

Thanks.

[crazy4laptops]

the s in your mpg1 is a ref to plural

the format looks like this mpeg-1

just search for mpeg-1 codec (audio)

[smax013]

The first thing you should do is determine what movie format the Sony camera REALLY uses. The parallel question is how did you get the movies on to the computer? Spell out the exact process.

[dabigkahuna]

Not sure how to tell the EXACT movie format. In one infomation area it refers to a quicktime movie and in another it says MPG on the computer.

As I recall (I've done so many things, I may not remember everything), I moved the files on a thumb drive and then either told iTunes to "Add to library" from that drive or I may have already copied from the thumb drive to another folder on the Mac before using that command.

I did have one odd thing happen though. Some of the movies ended up listed in the finder under "itunes music/movies" while others ended up under "itunes music/unknown artist/unknown album".

But all the movies came from the same camera so I have no idea why. The only difference was that all the videos that ended up in the movie folder had a name I gave them that started with "Vid". The ones in the other folder had names that either started with a date (04-12-30 for Dec 12, 2004, etc) or started with the word "Movie"

There was one other movie that didn't follow this pattern for names, but I don't recall which folder it was put in. Later I manually dragged them from the Unknown folder to the movie folder while in itunes (I think). Funny thing, I had tried that once, but they wouldn't move. Later when I tried, they did.

I'll see if I can find something that gives a precise format for the Sony movies - probably won't find the docs anymore, but maybe Sony has something online I can look into later - gotta go back to work soon.

[smax013]

Sounds like you got the movies off your old computer. How EXACTLY did you get the movies from you video camera to the old computer? Did you do anything with the movies while they were on the old computer other than play them?



If you can determine the model number of the camera, then we might be able to look up the specs of the camera and determine video format.

[dabigkahuna]

Yes, they were already on the old computer. I would plug the camera into the usb port and the computer would pull them in (using Picasa). Only changes made to the movies was to give them better names.

The camera is a Sony DSC-P150. The movie setting is 640x 480 in FINE mode.

[smax013]

dabigkahuna said:

Yes, they were already on the old computer. I would plug the camera into the usb port and the computer would pull them in (using Picasa). Only changes made to the movies was to give them better names.

The camera is a Sony DSC-P150. The movie setting is 640x 480 in FINE mode.

It appears that Sony uses a proprietary format for the movies on that digital camera called MPEG VX...and converting it to useful format is a pain in the rear. Here is a thread that looks like it might help:



http://forums.macnn....ormat-standard/

[dabigkahuna]

While I have some details to go through, this seems to solve the problem - and free!

I tested one video and converted it to mp4. Sound and video quality both seemed fine (long ago I had used the included software on the PC to combine a couple files and the video quality took a BIG hit). I also was able to load it into iMove so I assume I can manipulate it normally there - after I learn how to use it!

Didn't have to buy the Quicktime plug-in, but I assume that is because I bought QT Pro. Haven't tried yet to see if the resulting file will go into my iPhone or if other processing with iTunes is necessary. When I first talked to the Apple store people about the problem with sound loss when I made that conversion, they said my videos were probably small enough not to need conversion (before this format problem was discovered).

I guess I'll spend most of my day converting all these files, just remove the "Movie" or "Vid" part of the name I use at the beginning of each title, and save them in the same folder as the original then delete the originals.

Thanks a lot! This is a huge solution.

[dabigkahuna]

Well, did some more work on this and have a couple more questions. As I said, I converted to mp4, but don't really know if that is the best choice. I did notice that the file size jumped up from about 91 megabytes on the one I tested to 219!
Marking it to sync didn't move it to the iphone when I connected. I then used iTunes to create an iphone version (just 14 megabytes). But it didn't sync up with the phone either. No message, just no video on the phone in both cases. In the itunes list, I show the kind of file. Both of these show up as mpeg-4.

So, two questions:

1. Are there better options for conversion than mp4 (while maintaining quality)? There are a bunch on the list of options but I know nothing about them.

2. What do I need to do to get a video on the iphone? I probably normally won't put them there - maybe just one or two short ones - but it is something I need to know how to solve.

UPDATE: Changed the stereo setting to mono and at 128 k. This gave me a mp4 file of about 84 mb. Don't know what the ideal settings would be for something like this though. Since it was a ordinary camera, I suppose stereo is just a waste and most likely 128 k for sound would be fine? I can't tell a difference but right now I don't have high quality speakers.

Also finally got the files to the iphone. Converting to iphone on with this new program or with itunes didn't seem to work - at least they didn't transfer. Going into quicktime, I converted to two versions. One was for the iphone (8.8 mb) and the other was for the ipod (14 mb). Then I found a problem with how I was trying to transfer - I had checked the boxes in itunes under "music". Should have done so by going to my device listing instead. So I marked every version I had and synced the phone. Only the iphone and ipod versions were transferred.

Well, at least I know how to do it now and the iphone version seems as good as the ipod version and takes less memory. I have no idea why none of the other conversions moved - they all show up as m4v.

So I guess my only question left on this is what file format is best to convert to for use on my computer (or saving to dvds)?

[dabigkahuna]

Correction. Don't know how I screwed it up, but apparently I was wrong about making some changes to drop the converted mpeg-4 file down to 84 gb instead of over 200 (compared to the 91 in the original file). I found a version I converted that was over 200 and thought I must have deleted the wrong one, so I converted it again - still came out to 200+ and I don't see anything I may have done differently. I am a bit concerned about these big increases in file size. I don't want to lose quality, but don't know enough about it to know what to change.

There is a setting for "quality" and it seems to default to 50% - I made it 100% since I wanted as good a quality as possible. Just tried a test at 50% though. On my little screen, I don't see any obvious differences but the file size drops to 67 mb! But I'm concerned that it make matter on a larger screen since, eventually, I'll probably get at least a 22".