This is a technical entry (I'm pleased as punch to say...)
I have a lot of VCD disks (look like CDs) that I bought in China. I wanted to put them up on my YouTube site (fbuttmop is my name), but I was having trouble.
The problem is that when you export the file from Quicktime, the audio vapourizes. Kinda. It seems mac and QT are conspiring to stop people from doing this (something about copywrite or some BS). I won't go into detail, but here's what I did that works. I have FinalCut, but I know you can do this with iMovie as well.
1. The problem is the file is "muxxed." That's geek speek for "all mixed up" - I mean, the audio is encoded seperately from the video. You need to de-mux it. Try a programme called "bbDEMUX" - found here:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14618
It's petite. When you get it working (EZ, yo), it will say something about "drag and drop" - ignore that bs. Choose "open". select yr file and destination folder.
2. Now you have two probably obscurely named files. The one that says .m1v at the end is the video, thus the "v" (we never had problems with the video - that was the easy step). The second is yadda-yadda.m1a . In this case "a" stands for apoplectic, but not for you, cause I already figured this out. .m1a is an old audio file that worked on mac classic, but has now been phased out (enter conspiracy theory here if it makes you feel better). You will be able to play it, but not export it.
3. Here's what you do. RENAME the file yadda-yadda.m2a. Of course you should write out yadda-yadda just like that. To prove you're not an idiot.
4. Open the file in iTunes, control-click and chose convert selection to AAC. Then click right on the new file, drag and drop it onto your desktop or wherever. You now have a .m4a file. This file is also unopenable by most DV editing software.
5. I'm not going to explain my motivations here. What am I trying to work through, all this work just to post a video? You don't understand. These VCDs are awesome. Oh, we're not done. um.... oh -
Open the .m4a with quicktime, and then export it as an .avi file (chose no compression). You could probably use another format here, but I like .avi.
6. Import the .m1v and the .avi files to final cut, and, you know, edit them back together, render, export as .mp4 or whatever and post it.
Any questions? I probably won't know the answer. It's all like voo-doo to me.
I have all these great VCDs I got in China and I'm v. excited that I cracked them.
Later