Editing MPEG2

I just got a Canon FS100 and was excited to start editing movies with it.

Like many camcorders, it outputs MPEG2 files.

Firstly, there's something weird going on where it names the files something other than .mpg (.mod), and you use their program to import them from the camera. Once imported, you can export them to a 720x380 mpeg2 avi.

The kicker lies when you want to edit. I tried using it with Sony Vegas and it didn't quite work. I found that the video appear, but the audio didn't. After some looking around, I learned that mpeg2 is a "transport" format (i have no idea what that means), but it has something to do with the fact that it's meant for video, not both video and audio.

The solution is to transcode into something else. MP4 works, as it's both video and audio.

You can do this using ffmpeg. Once you've got your exported avi, you can issue the command:

Ffmpeg -sameq -i input.mpg output.mp4

you can then drop the mp4 file into your vegas project and you'll be good to go!