mpeg help/video editing

[Statler]

I have a couple hours of my buddy singing live, shot with a sony handycam.  We downloaded the camera to my computer and the vids are in mpg format.

His mac won't read them at all (sony handycam manual basically says tough shit for mac... it's a borrowed camera).

my windows movie maker gives a funny error when trying to import them.

"M2U00156.MPG could not be imported. An interface has too many methods to fire events from"

any help?

a recomendation for a file converter to put them in something else he can read on his macbook?   We need to edit it down to take one song at a time to post on his fanpage.

we are tech newbies.

[accludetuner]

If you still have the camcorder and the video is still on there, try connecting it with firewire (Sony iLink or something like that) and import them into MovieMaker as DV-AVI format. The MPG format is too compressed and "complicated" for MovieMaker to handle since it's almost a legacy video editor at this point.

If you can't do that then you have 2 options.

1. convert the MPG to AVI (specifically DV-AVI)
2. Use a different video editor

I don't know of any good free converters, but maybe someone else does. If you don't mind using cracked software then I *may or may not* have some stuff that will work for you. PM or email me if you want to go that route.

[Artful]

Would Saturday be too late for these things? I do some light video editing for the company on my linux machine, it will open damn near anything. How big are the files? I could try one and see if it will open it.

[Statler]

camera is empty since we're idiots and wiped it off expecting to shoot more the next day (it rained).

I may just purchase a converter.

I'll have the thumbdrive with them on it Sat.  biggest one is about 1.8 gig.

[Statler]

got one converted and into moviemaker.   carved out one song.  uploading now.  fingers crossed.

[Artful]

http://winff.org/html_new/

It's a Windows version of FFmpeg, an epic linux video converter.