MPEG video compression/conversion.
 

OK, I am getting very frustrated.

I have quite a bit of MPEG-2 video that I would like to recompress to H(X)264 or XVID/MP3 and have tried Auto Gordian Knot, VideoFAB, VirtualDub, etc. and everything wants to change the resolution. This is simple 720X480 29.97 and 640x480 30FPS NTSC MPEG video from my ReplayTV or DV camera. I want it to stay 720X480, 640X480 and no amount of button squishing appears to convince these tools to leave it the F alone. I also tried my DVD authoring software, but it has other issues or lack of support for those Codecs.

GSpot correctly identifies the streams and resolutions, so I am pretty sure it is not the source material or media tags... Heck, they play in any number of players which also correctly identify resolution and frame rates. Arghhhhh.

Anybody have a good and preferably free solution to recoding this video?

You could try DivX Author 30 day free trial. Not sure if it's crippled somehow though.

http://www.divx.com/en/downloads

Thanks, but I doubt anything with DIVX in the title is not going to support H264 or XVID... :rolleyes:

Huh. Would have thought VirtualDub would have done it. But, I use Premier for everything. Adobe used to have 30-day full working versions.

You're most welcome.

VirtualDub hates me. I have three versions and a Codec nightmare. the one that should work doesn't like MPEG-2 input files. Another refuses to have anything to do with Audio. (the menu is completely missing). Don't even ask about the third version.

It is still my best bet to get it working, but it is killing me...

Maybe when I get a job I will buy Premier and be done with all my video problems once and for all. Or just buy a Mac. ;)

Wait, I have a Mac. it is slow, but may do what I want. After all software on the Mac just works. :D

What sort of PC are you running besides your Mac?

[sung to the tune of 12 days of XMAS]I have... 3 Dell towers, 2 home brew servers, and a pa-aa-air of lap-tops.[/sung]

All the last generation of Intel and AMD single cores. 4Ghz Hyperthreaded P IV is probably the best machine. I swear it is faster than a lot of the 2Hgz Core 2 duos out there, but that may just be a vista vs. XP thing.

You wouldn't think keeping the same resolution and frame rate and just recoding was so difficult to do.

It is faster if you're not heavily multitasking.

Dudes on the torrent forums will have better answers.

They do that shit for fun.