Best MPEG-4 workaround?

hackazoid wrote on 2/23/2006, 5:40 AM

I'm a new VMS Plat user using a Casio EX-Z750 who has found the MPEG-4 incompatibility. I was using Windows Movie Maker to edit these for on-line sharing and figured I'd step up in editing capability.

Really surprised Vegas doesn't handle MPEG-4 directly plus from searching other posts there's nothing definitive as to "the" solution.

1. Convert via Windows movie maker... works but a timewaster to load into a project, load onto timeline and wait for render. Plus if I group together to have only one render, I then lose the clip segments so must redo splits in VMS. Or is there an easier way?

2. One person said they bought some codecs but was troublesome. They also had to hunt around another mfg site for another component. Sounded like a tough assignment.

Anybody up for taking one for the team and posting a doable workaround that we can use until Sony wakes up & integrates or sells a solution.

Really appreciate some help--I'd even buy a $30 package if it works such that I can just import my clips into VMS and place on the timeline without any conversion.

Thanks.

Comments

TheDingo wrote on 3/1/2006, 3:42 AM

One solution to consider is to use AVS Media Converter 4, to convert to from
the different formats. It's a great tool. Very easy to use. $30 to buy.

http://www.avsmedia.com/VideoConverter/index.aspx

SEW wrote on 3/1/2006, 4:50 AM

I use the ffdshow(free) codec to decode my motion-jpeg videos in VMS for my canon S2. The documeentation indicates that it also support mpeg-4. I downloaded the codec from:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/FFDShow.htm

Make sure you go in to the vfw configuration and enable mpeg-4 decoding.

ForumAdmin wrote on 3/3/2006, 6:49 AM

MPEG-4 support is not built into Vegas Movie Studio (it is available in the Pro version of Vegas). However, Quicktime supports MPEG-4 quite well, so installing the free version of that (or the $20 Quicktime Pro) will add quite a bit of MPEG-4 to all version of Movie Studio.

Andy C wrote on 3/6/2006, 1:29 PM

FYI:
I installed Quicktime 7.04 but still couldn't get the motion JPEG AVI files to load into VMS Platinum. All I got was the audio interleave, no video. I therefore bit the bullet and bought MainConcept's decoder which does the job just fine.
As a matter of interest, the Quicktime decoder worked OK in this fashion for VMS 4, but not for VMS Platinum. Go figure.
Also, if it's of any interest, I am using a Canon Powershot S2 IS.

Andy.

SEW wrote on 3/6/2006, 6:04 PM

The ffdshow codec works great for me, allowing me to edit my canon s2 video files in VMS. The ffdshow codec is available free. See my earlier post in this thread for the url to download.

Andy C wrote on 3/8/2006, 1:17 AM

Hi Steve,
Yes, I did see your post. I just thought I'd go with a payware codec in case of any problems with a freeware one ([thinks] like codecs go wrong!..).
It was only $10 or thereabouts. It was kind of a no-brainer. I'll keep FFDShow in mind, though.
Andy.

SEW wrote on 3/8/2006, 4:43 PM

If it was just for me, I might have gone with another solution. I support two other relatives each with VMS and an S2is camera. I also like the fact ffdshow codec supports decoding and encoding of many formats in addition to m-jpeg. I will add that I have not tested decoding anything besides m-jpeg.