MPG files and iMovie.. can anyone help?

monkeyastronautmonkeyastronaut
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I'm trying to make a lil movie using iMovie 3.0.3. I have some .MPG movies (with sound) taken with a Sony digital camera. When I drag and drop them to iMovie the video plays fine, but I get no sound. I've been playing around with it, but I just can't make the sound from the .MPG files work. Am I doing something wrong? I've never really used iMovie before.



Help please!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    ijerryijerry Posts: 615member
    The best way to do this that I have found is to open the mpegs up in quicktime and then export to dv stream. As long as the sound and video is not a muxed track this works. That is what I would do, I hope that helps you out.
  • Reply 2 of 10
    monkeyastronautmonkeyastronaut Posts: 1,343member
    Do I need Quicktime Pro to do that? I open the MPG videos on QuickTime but I can't find the Export option on it...
  • Reply 3 of 10
    ijerryijerry Posts: 615member
    yes, you will need quicktime pro, but it is only 30 bucks and well worth the price in my opinion.
  • Reply 4 of 10
    mcqmcq Posts: 1,543member
    you can also try some freeware to try and demux the mpegs... search for mpgtx or bbdemux on versiontracker
  • Reply 5 of 10
    gardenofearthlydelightsgardenofearthlydelights Posts: 963member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by MCQ

    you can also try some freeware to try and demux the mpegs... search for mpgtx or bbdemux on versiontracker



    Exactly.



    bbdemux (VT)



    After running this, you get two files-- a video and an audio Quicktime file. Open both. Go to the video and select the whole thing. Switch to the audio and paste it in (Paste Scaled).



    I don't know if you need QT Pro to do this pasting, but it can't hurt. However, to work with iMovie, the file has to be in DV format. For that you need QT Pro, I think. I saw a couple of little programs recently that turns QT movies to DV. You may want to search Version Tracker for these. Sorry, but I can't remember the name of the program right now.
  • Reply 6 of 10
    jimdadjimdad Posts: 209member
    Am I missing something here? Surely if you can open the files in QT you can just import straight into iMovie 3 ?
  • Reply 7 of 10
    knight26knight26 Posts: 12member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jimdad

    Am I missing something here? Surely if you can open the files in QT you can just import straight into iMovie 3 ?



    iMovie is a Digital Video editing program. It works with DV movies. Therefore you need QuickTime Pro to be able to export standard mpgs into DV mpgs.



    It that simple.
  • Reply 8 of 10
    gordygordy Posts: 1,004member
    You will not be able to export MPEGs wholly from QT Pro. It will strip the sound from the exported movie.
  • Reply 9 of 10
    gardenofearthlydelightsgardenofearthlydelights Posts: 963member
    Okay-- let's recap. To get MPEG files into iMovie,



    1. demux the MPEG file -> you get separate video, audio files.

    2. combine the files

    3. export the combined files as DV format

    4. import into iMovie.
  • Reply 10 of 10
    monkeyastronautmonkeyastronaut Posts: 1,343member
    Wow, thanks a lot!



    I read somewhere that the sound part of the MPG needs to be converted to Aiff before getting it back together with the video part of the MPG and then convert to DV.



    Thanks so much for all your help. I'll post this webpage I came across with too.



    How to convert MPEG1 muxed file for use in iMovie
Sign In or Register to comment.