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:
- iDVD2 or iDVD3 -- Came with some copies of OS X, or it's part of iLife.
- QuickTime Pro - $30
- QuickTime MPEG2 Decoder - $20 ... Yeah, so there's a cost involved, but I compressed a 1.45 Gig movie to 455MB! It's worth it.
What to do:- Create a new iDVD project (basically just open the application).
- Select a theme, preferably one without motion.
- Drag as many QuickTime movies into the project as you'd like (they will still remain separate files through this process).
- 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.
- 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."
- 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...
- Open the original QuickTime movie and export the sound as .wav, making sure to keep the same data rate settings etc.
- 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".
- 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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