Playing and Using MPEG Files

AKAGraphix wrote on 5/19/2002, 7:04 PM

Greetings. Anyone know why I cannot play MPEG-1 (or what I think are MPEG-1 videos in VV3? I am downloading files called "Great Zooms" from NASA (http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a002200/a002249/index.html) and want to import them into my VV3 productions. They don't play at all. Why? Thanks.

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 5/19/2002, 9:07 PM

MPEG support is disabled in the demo. If you have already purchased VV3 you still need to register the MPEG plug-in seperately.

AKAGraphix wrote on 5/19/2002, 10:01 PM

Thanks Billy Bob. I did all that. I bought VV3 on first day, registered it and registered Mpeg... Still no luck. Maybe if you have time, or if anyone does, go to the link in first message and try it. It says MPEG-1. Don't know what's up but I can't view it.

AKAGraphix wrote on 5/19/2002, 10:10 PM

And now, of all the goofy things, I just opened it in Microsoft's Movie Maker (geez) and saved it as an .avi. It opened fine. Quality is not good though. What gives???? Anyone from Sonic Foundry? I have registered everything the way I was suppose to and have been a loyal user of Video Factory 1, 2 VV 2 and 3. HELP???

Cheesehole wrote on 5/19/2002, 10:45 PM

try rendering an *uncompressed* avi from MS Movie Maker. the quality of the rendered AVI shouldn't be degraded from the source MPEG-1 file if you don't use compression.

that is exactly what I would try to do with the MPEG-1 file... try to convert it using other software. good luck...

jgourd wrote on 5/20/2002, 11:14 AM

It won't play in VV3 because it is an invalid MPG file. I just tried it.

AKAGraphix wrote on 5/20/2002, 8:37 PM

Okay. I am just gonna go with Hole's idea. I opened it fine in Microsoft Video Maker. I rendered it in the highest quality and saved it. I opened it in VV3 with no problem and with good quality. Sort of a crazy way to go about it with a pro ap but..... Thanks

SonyEPM wrote on 5/21/2002, 9:24 AM

Don't expect too much from an MPEG-1 source file. Even if you convert it to .avi or something else, the MPEG-1 compression stage will have thrown away lots of data and the quality will never be that great.

BillyBoy wrote on 5/21/2002, 12:26 PM

Having spent literally hundreds of hours converting MPEG-1 files to AVI for sure the source file already has had lots of information stripped by the compression process. Nothing you do can to bring back what was lost. Still contray to what you would expect "improvements" sometimes significant can be had by first converting to uncompressed AVI prior to doing anything else to the file. What happens I don't pretend to understand. Common sense would suggest "growing" a file from maybe 200K to 4GB or whatever making it a AVI gives you lots more bits to work with. Therefore when you convert back out to MPEG again the render engine has more to work with. I wouldn't have spent over a year working on my never ending project if the results didn't justify it. I tried a shortcut starting with a MPEG file and it just couldn't compare.

stepfour wrote on 5/21/2002, 1:03 PM

I agree. I can't believe all the time I wasted last year taking great DV AVI's and turning them into MPEG-1 and then horrible looking VCD's.

Hey, BillyBoy, I am a new user of VV3a but I haven't done anything that required the MPEG module yet so I don't know if I have it or have registered it yet. Is there a quick way I can check that?

BillyBoy wrote on 5/21/2002, 2:42 PM

Just try dragging any MPEG file to the timeline. If it drops, you're all set, if it stays a line through a circle either you haven't registered yet or you hit a weird file WW3 don't understand.

stepfour wrote on 5/21/2002, 3:23 PM

I tried that and indeed I got a box stating I needed to register. I Just clicked through the steps and registration is complete. Sadly, I have had VV3a for some time now but have never gotten far enough into it to even attempt playing and mpeg. Been too busy with daily life. Now it's time to sit down with Vegas. Thanks.