Quality loss converting mpg to AVI

[MJK1250]

All - I promise, I did search thru dozens of posts and topics on this site before posting this, but I just can't seem to find the answer to my problem.

I have 50-60 small mpg video clips that I want to include in various PRE11 projects. Following the advice in Steve's book, I wanted to convert them all to AVI before bringing them into PRE11. Can't use Windows Movie Maker as I have Windows 7 which will not output DV-AVI's.

Installed Virtual Dub but get the following message when I try to load my mpg into the program: MPEG Import Filter; Invalid packet at position3; Marker bit not set; Possibly MPEG-2stream. Naturally this was all Greek to me.

So I downloaded Free Studio from DVDVideoSoft which has at least two programs that I thought would be helpful to me. The first one (Video Dub) is supposed to be lossless and enables one to do some basic cutting and trimming which I thought would be a good idea before bringing the clips into PRE11. This worked fine on one of my mpgs - cut and trimmed where I wanted it to and no loss of quality on the output version. Took the trimmed video (still an mpg) and ran it through the Free AVI Video Converter program that also comes with Free Studio. This program converted my mpg to AVI but the newly converted AVI is squished (much more vertical than the original mpg). Tried taking an untrimmed (did not run it thru Video Dub first) mpg and running it thru Free AVI Video Converter but got the same result - squished finished AVI. Contacted the DVDVideoSoft support team who told me to make sure my output was set to "Original" which it was on the first try. Tried again and no change - still squished converted AVI.

Still not wanting to post what is probably a novice question, I next downloaded Super Video Converter, followed the settings and directions in Steve's book, and ran my mpg thru it and did in fact get a converted Quick Time (mpg.dv) however the loss in quality was pretty substantial compared to my original mpg - probably 20-25 percent degraded. I have Quick Time Pro version 7.7.4 which is a pretty recent version.

I haven't yet tried MPEG Steamclip but it just seems to me that there must be some conversion program out there that will simply convert my mpgs to AVIs without a large loss of quality? If I could get that done, then I could run the converted to AVI videos thru the Video Dub program for minor cutting and trimming and maybe actually move forward to creating a PRE11 project.

I'm grateful for any help or advice.

MJK

[Dave McElderry]

Have you tried just adding them to the PrEl 11 timeline and seeing how it goes? My experience with V11 is that it handles mpegs very well. If you need to use both MPGs and AVIs on the same timeline and the program complains, try letting PrEl convert the MPGs to AVI, then bring them back into your project. It's worth a a shot and easy to do.

[Bob]

Early versions of Premiere Elements didn't handle mpg very well and it was advisable to convert mpg clips to dv-avi before trying to use them in a project. But, that was back in the days when most consumer camcorders produced dv-avi. That's no longer the case. Today, most consumer video uses some form of mpeg and support for mpeg in Premiere Elements is very much improved. With Premiere Elements 11, it should not be a problem. In general, you shouldn't need to convert mpeg files unless they are using nonstandard or unusual codecs or unless your computer is underpowered and can't cope with the computational demands.

Go ahead and use the clips directly in a project that matches the clip attributes.

[Steve Grisetti]

I agree with the others. In current versions of the program, it's no longer necessary to convert MPEGs to use them in your project. In fact, it can be counter-productive, since many conversion programs convert your files into a LESS compatible file.

[MJK1250]

Dave & Bob

Thanks for the quick replies. I'll give it a go with my mpgs directly in PRE11 and hope for the best. If I have problems, I'll try to have PRE11 convert my mpgs to AVI as Dave suggested. Not sure how to do that but will search thru Steve's book for directions - or perhaps I should call it "The Book of Steve" as I saw in an earlier thread. It really has become my bible for PRE11.

Thanks again for your help.

MJK

[Steve Grisetti]

I don't think you say where these MPEGs are coming from -- but if they're from a DVD or from an MPEG-based camcorder, they should load right into version 11 as is and produce great results.

[Dave McElderry]

If it should become necessary to convert using PrEl (which it probably won't) it's just a matter of going to Share > Computer > AVI and choose the preset that's appropriate for your project. Let us know how things go.