MPGA aka MPEG 1 Layer 1 Audio

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MPGA aka MPEG 1 Layer 1 Audio

I've spent the better part of this evening looking for an MPGA plug-in for Quicktime. I have a considerably large collection of videos (mostly) encoded with Xvid for video and MPGA for audio so running 160gb+ worth of video through Divx Doctor II isn't exactly an option. I have VLC and I used to use it all the time but with a new iMac on the way, I would like to figure out a way to play these videos in Front Row (hence Quicktime).

If anyone could point me in the direction of an MPGA codec it would be much appreciated. Thanks.

-Shaun

eMac 1ghz G4 Superdrive, Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Posted on Jan 11, 2006 11:07 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 12, 2006 1:56 AM in response to Shaun Martin

Hmm. But doesn't QT 6 and 7 play MP2 a.k.a. MPEG1 layer 2 a.k.a. M1A audio (I've not seen it referred as MPGA before) audio in MPEG1 and MPEG2 files? It doesn't play PCM or AC3 audio.

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Answer 2

Jan 12, 2006 3:22 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Some people have reported problems with QT in OS X not playing mislabeled mpegs with extensions like .mpeg. In some cases they play if you change the extension to .mpg. No guarantees but it is worth a try.

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Answer 3

Ricktoronto

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Jan 12, 2006 11:11 AM in response to Shaun Martin

Toast 7 may be able to transcode them. It should recognize M1A from VCD files. Might need the Jam option.

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Answer 4

Shaun Martin Author

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Jan 13, 2006 12:17 AM in response to Shaun Martin

All of the files in question are AVI's.. The video is in Xvid and as most of these were recorded via a capture card, the most common audio format seems to be MPEG1 Layer 1. I haven't tried the transcoding option yet although I'm a little reluctant to do so seeing that it would probably take a couple hours per file. I know that at one point, the sound in these worked in QT (probably QT6 but it may have been 7) I just can't figure out why it's not working now.

Matti: I've tried installing as AC3 codec just in case and it was a no go but I do know what you mean. I was under the impression that QT and MPEGs got along famously. It's really rather sad, if I can't figure out a way to play my existing video collection in QT (and by extension Front Row) I'll simply never use Front Row.

Just for the sake of satisfying my curiousity, I used Divx Doctor II on a file. It fixed the audio but the video became choppy, laggy and unwatchable.

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Answer 5

Jan 13, 2006 4:34 AM in response to Shaun Martin

Have you tried to play the clips via MPEG Streamclip? Unlike QT Player, it can play also PCM and AC3 audio. MPEG Streamclip guide has some info about the required DivX plugins (currently a very messy situation so I've tried to avoid DivX and AVI stuff!)

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Answer 6

Shaun Martin Author

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Jan 15, 2006 10:10 AM in response to Matti Haveri

MPEG Streamclip can't play the audio either.. It's starting to look like VLC is the only one that will.

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Answer 7

Jan 16, 2006 1:08 AM in response to Shaun Martin

MPEG Streamclip can't play the audio either

Sounds strange (pun not intended).

Can you hear sound in other video clips?

FWIW, there is an obscure bug (AFAIK only in 10.4) where the audio hardware goes into a state where there is no audio output (and also a DV camcorder may not be recognized properly). The fix is to open GarageBand and play a few notes. Other alternative is to set the MIDI settings to 44.1 kHz via the Audio MIDI setup app (or something like that -- I can't check the exact name of the app in the /Applications right now).

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Answer 8

Shaun Martin Author

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Jan 16, 2006 10:35 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Yes, I can hear sound in other videos and sounds from the affected clips work fine in VLC. I'm pretty sure the problem lies within QT's ability to read the audio stream. Basically, I think it just needs an MPGA codec which doesn't seem to exist..

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Answer 9

Jan 16, 2006 11:43 AM in response to Shaun Martin

Since you have already stated that DivX Doctor can read the audio (but the playback was not optimal) I suggest you again use the Doctor to convert the audio track to uncompressed (you will want to check the preferences to set that option), then encode that into something like mpeg-4 (AAC) sound. Then extract the video track, Select All, Copy to clip board and open the mpeg-4 sound file, select all, then use Add to Selection and Scale to put the two tracks together. That should play with no problems and although it may take a while to encode the sound, it would probably be worth the time to have a nice playing video.

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Answer 10

Shaun Martin Author

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Jan 16, 2006 7:38 PM in response to Dick Napoli

running 160gb+ worth of video through Divx Doctor II isn't exactly an option

Thanks for the suggestion, I tried it and it worked but I just don't have the time or hard drive space to do this for all my videos. Plus, I've got a collection of Xvid files on DVDs that I don't have the luxury of transcoding. I only mentioned that it worked in case it jogged someone's memory.

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Answer 11

Shaun Martin Author

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Jul 12, 2006 8:21 PM in response to Shaun Martin

Eventually got the right combination of codecs together

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