Editing .mpc .. video files?

September 1, 2009 8:55 PM

I'd like to convert .mpc video files to something I can edit in Adobe Premiere.

I have a batch of .mpc files I'd like to edit in Premiere. Google seems to agree that this is an audio format (Musepack), but I'm able to watch the files with audio in VLC without any problems. If it matters, most of the files are around 250 MB. What's going on here? How can I convert the files into something I can import?

posted by zxcvz to technology (7 comments total)

Drop the files into the GUI of MediaInfo or use the Media Information tab in VLC and let's see what these files actually are.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:57 PM on September 1

Playstation game video files, right? Nothing to do with the Musepack format, which is audio-only.

From memory it's an MPEG transport stream containing MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video, with the audio in an odd Electronic Arts ADPCM format. FFmpeg should be able to convert both the video and audio (I'm not sure if VLC can convert the audio because, although it's based on FFmpeg, it leaves out some of the odder codecs).

The video also isn't in DVD-standard 720x576/480 size, it's something smaller (512x256? Something like that...), but Premiere should resize that for you.
posted by Pinback at 10:46 PM on September 1

They're actually public records videos.

Here's the output from MediaInfo:

MPEG-PS: 256 MiB
1 Video stream: MPEG-4 visual
1 Audio stream: MPEG audio

Video:
3 765 Kbps, 720*480 (1.636), MPEG-4 Visual (NTSC) (Custom Matrix)
Audio:
64.0 Kbps, 44.1 KHz, 2 channels, MPEG Audio (Version 1) (Layer 2)
posted by zxcvz at 11:45 PM on September 1

Doesn't VLC let you output stuff? Have it emit mjpeg video, PCM audio avi's.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:50 PM on September 1

OK, so that says it's an MPEG program stream, with MPEG-4 video and MP2 audio. Standard enough - you could almost get away with just renaming them to .mpg, but without knowing the exact version of Premiere I can't say if it'll handle MPEG-4 video in a PS.

If renaming doesn't work, VLC or one of the other FFmpeg front-ends (e.g. SUPER, though I hesitate to recommend it because it's as ugly as sin) should convert them to something suitable without a problem.
posted by Pinback at 12:00 AM on September 2

Anything you can watch in VLC, you can also transcode to some format that's more useful to you.
posted by flabdablet at 2:33 AM on September 2

MPEG-4 visual at 3765 kbps for full NTSC frame is reasonably small. Try remuxing (not transcoding) to an AVI container with Avidemux or ffmpeg and see if Premier will open that (if it handles DivX, it'll do this just fine).
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 11:32 AM on September 3