Converting videos from digicam to DVD standard

[meirionwyllt]

Here is my predicament with a project that I'm currently working on:

My friend and I are authoring a DVD of our recent holiday. My job (using a PC) is to convert the short videos that I took on my Canon IXUS camera, into a format that Final Cut can import (preferably MPEG-2). My friend will be editing and authoring the DVD using Final Cut on the Mac, so his job is only to download the DV off his camcorder, which he is fine with.

Now, using my PC, I want to convert the video from 320x240 / 30fps AVI (GSpot tells me it's a Motion JPEG), into DVD standard 720x576 / 25fps MPEG-2, and the audio from
8bit/11kHz PCM into 16bit/48kHZ AC3.

I would rather do this straight into MPEG-2 in one go using one encoding run, since the starting resolution is rather small, and it would look bad if it were to be re-encoded several times before the authoring stage.

I have tried TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 but I'm guessing it doesn't support mjpegs. (by the way, is there a plugin for this?)

I have tried VirtualDub-MPEG2 but this will only encode to AVI (correct me if I'm wrong), and also I couldn't find anywhere to change the resolution of the video.

And on my version of VirtualDubMod (1.5.10.2), the audio menu doesn't even appear for some reason.

Of course I could just take the video files round to his house as they are, but I want them as MPEG-2 first so that I could do some basic cutting/merging with other videos, and also with clips I've taken from some of my favourite DVDs (saved as MPEG-2), before I go round his house to finalise things.

Can anyone suggest a program that would do what I want? Money is not an
issue here, because I can see myself making a lot of use of such a program.
I am currently trying out Adobe Premiere Pro 2 and the only thing stopping
me from using this is that the MainConcept MPEG plugin for Premiere does not
yet support version 2 of Premiere, and I am waiting for a version 2 of the
plugin (by the way does anyone know how far away this is?).

I thank you for any suggestions you may have...

[benbryant]

Hi meirionwyllt,

Have you ever heard of a program called MP4Cam2AVI? I've this tool for a while and never had the chance to try it yet. Please go the site from the link below and let us know how it works for you. After converting to AVI, you can encode to mpeg-2 with any tools such as TMPGEnc,... Good luck

http://mp4cam2avi.sourceforge.net/

Regards

[paglamon]

And on my version of VirtualDubMod (1.5.10.2), the audio menu doesn't even appear for some reason.

Select STREAMS/Stream List and u will see ur audio stream.

[meirionwyllt]

Select STREAMS/Stream List and u will see ur audio stream.

Thanks, but I still can't find a page that lets me re-encode the audio (preferably straight to AC-3).

[meirionwyllt]

Hi meirionwyllt,

Have you ever heard of a program called MP4Cam2AVI? I've this tool for a while and never had the chance to try it yet. Please go the site from the link below and let us know how it works for you. After converting to AVI, you can encode to mpeg-2 with any tools such as TMPGEnc,... Good luck

http://mp4cam2avi.sourceforge.net/

Regards

Thanks for the suggestion. I did indeed download and try this program, but I think this is mainly for converting TO mjpeg not FROM mjpeg. I say this because the resulting file is exactly the same size as the input, and I still can't open the output file in TMPGEnc.

Any more suggestions anyone?