MPEG-2 and the Mac
Old versions of QuickTime needed a paid add-on to play MPEG-2, and current macOS still handles it poorly. QuickTime Player often shows an error for DVD and TV recordings, or plays them without sound when the audio is MP2 or Dolby Digital. iMovie and Final Cut Pro can be picky with VOB and TS files as well. Converting MPEG to MOV gives you a file with H.264 video and AAC audio that every Apple app accepts.
Typical Mac projects
- Editing a family DVD in iMovie: a wedding, a school play, holiday footage from a DVD camcorder.
- Putting digitised VHS tapes into Final Cut Pro to restore and cut them.
- Adding an old TV clip to a Keynote presentation.
- Moving home videos into Photos so they sync to iPhone and iPad.
Get the frame right
DVD video uses non-square pixels: the picture is stored as 720×576 (PAL) or 720×480 (NTSC) and shown wider on screen, either 4:3 or 16:9. Keep the original resolution to preserve the proportions the disc was made with. Keep the original frame rate too: 25 fps for PAL material, 29.97 fps for NTSC. Changing it can make motion jerky.
Much DVD and TV material is interlaced. In iMovie and Final Cut Pro you may see thin lines on fast motion. That is a property of the source; professional editors such as Final Cut Pro can deinterlace clips if it bothers you.
How long it takes
MPEG-2 has to be decoded and encoded again, and browsers cannot do this alone, so the page loads its built-in converter engine. A one-hour DVD title takes a while even on a fast Mac. Convert the VOB files of a disc in one batch and let it run. Your videos stay on your computer.
If you do not edit on a Mac, MP4 is the more universal choice: MPEG to MP4. After converting, you can trim or rotate in the MOV Editor, and turn MOV back into MPEG with MOV to MPEG.