Is QuickTime "Pro" useless?

Question

I have a mpg movie (mpeg4/mpeg4aac codecs) that I'd like to covert to an Apple-friendly format such as .mov, but QuickTime fails to even recognize the file as a movie and open it. I was under the impression QuickTime Pro could do some amount of video exporting, but if its video codec set is so limited, I can't see what its good for.
Anyone using the "Pro" features of QuickTime for anything useful? As it is, I believe I need to purchase different software, like Video Converter for Mac, to do the job I feel like QuickTime should handle. Anyone have any tips or suggestions?

Answer 1

I'm currently converting .m2t files to put on my iPod Video for TV playback. I have the MPEG2 QT component installed and can use StreamClip to edit out unwanted content then export to MPEG4 files. However I've found that iSquint converts so much quicker but you can't do any editing. StreamClip doesn't seem to save natively back to a .m2t file.
As to iSquint converting so much faster, I believe it still defaults to MPEG4/AAC while MPEG Streamclip defaults to H.264/AAC compression which is roughly 2.0-2.5 times as efficient and provides better quality for a given video data rate but does require more time to encode. If speed is all you want, then switch to the "Apple MPEG-4 Compressor" in the "Compression" pop-up after you select the "iTunes" option to load your basic "iPod" settings. You can also make any other adjustments may wish at this time.
Actually, trying to save to an M2T container is something I've never tried since I don't normally have access to M2T files. However, does the exported file have to be M2T? Or is it the contained data that is really important here? Had assumed using the MPEG Streamclip "Save As..." option would simply place the data in a more common MPEG-2 file container but I could be wrong here. What actually happened when you tried it?
I was wondering if converting to MPEG4 with either QT Pro or iSquint then editing with QT Pro would be faster than the process I'm using.
You can convert to MPEG-4/AAC or H.264/AAC in either MPEG Streamclip or iSquint (or any number of other converters) and then do your "trimming" in QT Pro if you want. The disadvantage here is that if you want to avoid any further re-conversion of your content, you would then have to save it in an MOV file container which means you can no longer associate external "artwork" with the file in iTunes as you can with either the MP4 or M4V file containers. Of course, you could then always use MPEG Streamclip to place the MOV content back into an MP4 container without re-compression, but that seems to make the whole process a bit more tedious in the long run.
Of course, if you don't mind the MOV container and have GarageBand installed, you could now chapter your iPod file if you wished. On the other hand, if you perform your edits in an intermediate compression format and really want chaptered content, you could chapter in GarageBand and re-compress to your file for iTunes with chapters in an externally "artwork" compatible file container. Basically, you have as many options in converting your content for iPod use as you can dream up as long as you can "live with your results."