M2V to M2T or other - best conversion tool ?

DaveM2 wrote on 8/4/2009, 11:31 AM
I have an M2V video file I want to include in a Vegas project. Vegas 8 doesn't like it, , and from what I understand, Vegas 9 does not either.

One reason I started exploring Vegas was I because I had used DVDA with M2V files from my other editor, and I liked DVDA, so I thought why not try Vegas 8. I was a bit surprised to find that Vegas did not import M2V files.

Nevertheless, that's life - so now I am wondering what the best way to convert an M2V file so that Vegas can use it ?

Comments

MarkWWW wrote on 8/4/2009, 12:55 PM
For some reason no version of Vegas has ever been able to import an MPEG elementary video stream (.M2V), despite this being the food of choice for DVD Architect.

But it is easy enough to get an elementary stream into Vegas - you just need to multiplex it together with a (possibly non-existent) audio elementary stream into a MPEG program stream (.MPG). There are probably a number of multiplexers around that can do this. I've used TMPEG in the past with success - just use the simple multiplex in the MPEG Tools section and choose the M2V as the video file and leave the audio file blank.

Mark
gwailo wrote on 8/4/2009, 1:19 PM
I've used microsoft's free windows movie maker to convert both m1v and m2v files.
DaveM2 wrote on 8/4/2009, 1:58 PM
I will try them both - but I noticed that tmpgEnc Plus indicates about 1 hr 20 min to re-encode an hour of video - so maybe in the end it is as fast or faster to just re-capture the original video if available.

Update - I tried Movie Maker - I have version 5.1 - it did not allow for conversion of a M2v file.... I didn't see an update - what version of Movie Maker are you using ??
MarkWWW wrote on 8/4/2009, 2:53 PM
Something wrong there then. You shouldn't be re-encoding anything, just multiplexing the existing (elementary) stream into a different wrapper - a program stream.

Mark
DaveM2 wrote on 8/4/2009, 2:56 PM
I did a small m2v file I had - and the resulting mpg file just had a frozen image file on the imported video - sound was ok - but no video other than a single image - so I am sure you are right - I am doing something wrong. I will take another look.

Update: I have taken a second look at it and in tmpgEn the same picture remains in the encoding screen - the only thing that stands out to me is the preset of 720x480 when the file is actually 1440x1080 - but I see no way of changing that - options are grayed out.
blink3times wrote on 8/4/2009, 3:22 PM
You can use TSmuxer (free download). It changes the container only and does not reencode. Import your M2V and output to M2TS, which Vegas accepts.

http://smlabs.net/tsmuxer_en.html
DaveM2 wrote on 8/4/2009, 3:38 PM
Thanks - TSMuxer fixed the video frame freeze I had with tmpgen - but I didn't get audio with TSMuxer, which is no big deal - and Vegas imported the M2TS file fine.

Tried to resolve the tmpgen video freeze frame - but with no luck so far - was able to set mpeg2 encoding to 1440x1080 at 29.97 - but still got the freezed video frame. When I set the frame rate to 59+, tmpgen bombed - so that didn't help.

I obviously am setting something wrong with tmpgen - just can't figure out what.
MarkWWW wrote on 8/4/2009, 3:46 PM
Hmmm, now I think about it I've probably only ever done this with SD .M2Vs. It may be that TMPEG doesn't like HD files.

But good to hear that you've solved the problem a different way with TSMUXER.

Mark
blink3times wrote on 8/4/2009, 4:00 PM
As with the M2V video file, you must also manually add the audio file and TSmuxer will mux the audio and serve it all up as a M2TS complete with audio. There are however only certain kinds of audio that tsmuxer will accept so you will have to play around a little.

In the case of a WAV file (I'm assuming you're coming from Liquid or similar.... which uses M2V/WAV??), Vegas will readily accept it as is.... so M2TS your video file, import that to Vegas and then import the wav directly and throw it on the timeline with your M2TS.
DaveM2 wrote on 8/10/2009, 10:29 AM
Blink - quick question. I am not figuring out how to get a M2ts file with both audio and video. I muxed each one (the M2v and the WAV) - but I had to give them different names as the each had the extension .m2ts - and I can't seem to get the two together using TS_Muxer. I know you said in 2nd part of your post to just bring the audio into vegas separately, which I can do, but in the first part of your post you said....

As with the M2V video file, you must also manually add the audio file and TSmuxer will mux the audio and serve it all up as a M2TS complete with audio.

I would like to get a combined audio/video m2ts file - but can't figure out how to get that in the TS_Muxer interface. Any suggestions ? Thanks.
blink3times wrote on 8/10/2009, 10:40 AM
If I'm understanding you correctly, what you have are 2 files;
AUDIO.M2TS
VIDEO.M2TS

TSmuxer basically muxes/demuxes elementary streams and places them in/takes them out of their containers. It sounds like your trying to mux 2 containers (which is what m2ts is)

You will have to demux the m2ts into their elementary video/audio streams (ie; m2v/ac3... .264/ac3... etc) THEN import to tsmuxer.