Squared 5 To The Rescue
October 5, 2006 by Juan Magdaraog
Filed under Computers
So.. I was having quite a pickle the other day. I have to convert several MPEG videos to Quicktime format. It’s a for a client’s site. He provided me with MPEG videos. All the while I thought I had the software to convert it. But.. when I tried to convert them, no dice. My existing software couldn’t even open the files. I tried Apple’s MPEG Quicktime plugin but it could only open the videos and play them. When I tried to export it, only the video exported. No sound. I started to panic. I had to get these videos done. I knew Final Cut Pro or Express might do the trick but I didn’t want to spend just for that. So I started looking for freeware to do the conversion. Luckily I found MPEG Streamclip by Squared 5.
MPEG Streamclip is a powerful video converter, player, editor for Mac and Windows. It can play many movie files, not only MPEGs; it can convert MPEG files between muxed/demuxed formats for authoring; it can encode movies to many formats, including iPod; it can cut, trim and join movies.
Suddenly all my worries were gone. MPEG Streamclip does a good job of converting the MPEG files to Quicktime movies. You can chose from the various codecs that are included to convert your files to. I’ve only tried the H.264 codec since this was the one I wanted to use. Haven’t had time really to explore the other codecs. Ok, fine.. I didn’t want to bother and explore the other codecs. Hey, I’m not really a video guy..
MPEG Streamclip is free and Universal. Got try it.
Exactly what I was looking for! Thanks! :) FYI, I tried importing a few of my MPEG files into Final Cut Pro… no audio. I think it’s because the video and audio in most (if not all) MPEG files are combined in a single stream (I think the term is called multiplexing) and Final Cut Pro will only be able to recognize the audio if it’s in a separate stream.