Fiery Creations :: My Little Corner of the World...

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Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. Star Wars is the property of George Lucas and Lucasfilm. Yu-Gi-Oh! is the property of Kazuki Takahashi, 4Kids, etc. Supernatural is the property of Eric Kripke, Warner Brothers/The CW, etc. Kingdom Hearts is the property of Square-Enix, Disney, etc. I don't own any of these franchises. I do, however own DVDs/Blu-Ray discs/Games from them. I just like to play in a small part of these as a fan of these shows/movies. I also don't own the songs—the CDs they come from, yes, but the songs used belong to their recording artists and labels.

Converting with MPEG Streamclip

MPEG Streamclip is another wonderful freeware converter. The Windows version is more limited (unable to open M2TS, TS, or MKV at all; it even can't open VOB without the Quicktime MPEG-2 component on Quicktime or Quicktime Alternative), but is essential if you're using Sony Vegas Pro 8.0 or earlier, or any other NLE that can't open the MJPEG AVI files created by either Avidemux or Any Video Converter—more info on codecs HERE. The Mac version is updated more often, and there's a component that you can download alongside Streamclip to allow to you to convert straight to MJPEG or JPEG 2000 from MKV/M2TS. It allows you to set the percentage quality of your end result files (similar to converting with the full Quicktime program), which is pretty handy if you're trying to save hard drive space. (Download it HERE.)

Converting a Single File to MOV/AVI

Okay, if you're here, most likely you followed either my Avidemux or Any Video Converter tutorials and you can't get the MJPEG AVIs to be recognized in your NLE.

The first thing you're going to need to do after you open up MPEG Streamclip is go to File —> Export to QuickTime or File — Export to AVI,depending on which editing program you use. If you're using Windows Movie Maker, you must select Export to AVI because WMM doesn't accept MOV files of any kind.

Go to where the codec is listed and choose Apple Motion JPEG A/B or JPEG 2000 Encoder (JPEG 2000 is higher quality than MJPEG, but with bigger file sizes).

Quality: This means how much quality it retains from your imput file. This is another case of your miles may vary. I'd recommend somewhere in the 40-60% range, depending on your source. If it's DVD-quality, go the higher percentages; if it's Blu-ray quality, you can afford to go lower. But again, your miles may vary. Test these before you make your final decisions!
Sound: Go for Uncompressed, Stereo, and 48kHz respectively.
Frame Size: Always go with the unscaled verison of your video.
Frame Rate: Same as your imput file
In the case of Frame Blending and Better Downscaling, that again, depends. Again, test these results.
When in doubt–or using DVD quality files, always check Deinterlace Video

Now just click Make Movie...

...and select where to save your file.

While your file is being written, these two windows pop up:

MPEG Streamclip saves like this. It's telling you at which point in the episode/movie it's working on, and at how fast it's working, including a picture of the frame it's on. Just ignore it. They'll dissappear when the files are finished being converted/encoded.

NOW, you should be able to open your file in any NLE no problem!

Batch Converting/Joining Multiple Files

Hey wait! What if I created my MJPEG AVI files from Avidemux and they're all in chunks? I want to join them into a single file!
Or...
I want to do multiple files instead of converting one. single. file. at. a. time. How do I do that? You said this could batch convert!

And it can! First off, instead of going to Export to..., go to List —> Batch List like below:

And this window will pop up:

Click on Add Files, and this window will pop up:

Now, for joining files, you want to select your first file (and make sure that your files to join together are in numerical order, or this will become a HUGE mess), then either hold down the CTRL key and select all the other file in numerical order, or hold down the SHIFT key then the last numbered one, then click Open. (If you're just adding a single file, you don't need to worry about holding down keys.)

Then this next window will appear. First, choose either Export to QuickTime or Export to AVI, then check "Join all the files" and "Fix timecode breaks"; then press OK.

Next choose the folder to save your output file to (you can't rename it, unlike when saving a single file).

Your file(s) will show up in this window. To do multiple files in a session, all you have to do is click Add Files and start all over again. When you're ready to convert them all, just click Go.

And that's it. You're ready to edit your files in any NLE (well, any except WMM). Happy editing!