Use the hidden MPEG2 encoder in OS X

Jul 24, '03 09:24:00AM

Contributed by: mrpresident47

If you have large QuickTime movies eating up your hard drive space, you can easily convert them to MPEG2 using iDVD2 without burning a DVD! You need:

What to do:
  1. Create a new iDVD project (basically just open the application).
  2. Select a theme, preferably one without motion.
  3. Drag as many QuickTime movies into the project as you'd like (they will still remain separate files through this process).
  4. Now, the third tab in the theme window reveals the status of each movie's compression with a green bar. Wait for these bars to be filled (for your movies to be compressed). Save again.
  5. Go to your project file in the Finder and right-click or control-click on it and select "View package contents." Then peruse through until you find a folder named "MPEG."
  6. The files in this folder are your movies! Just drag them to a new folder and rename them to anything you like, ending in .mpg. Ahhh, so you now notice that they play GREAT but there's no sound. Two more steps...
  7. Open the original QuickTime movie and export the sound as .wav, making sure to keep the same data rate settings etc.
  8. Give this file the exact same name as your MPEG2 file, only with a .wav extension. Place this file in a folder with your .mpg movie. Just to clarify, you now have a folder with two files: "Anything.mpg" and "Anything.wav".
  9. Double click your .mpg file and you should find that your movie looks great, has great sound (and is in sync), and is roughly one-quarter to one-third the size of your original movie.
You just saved $1,000 since you didn't have to buy Cleaner 6!

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