MPEG to MP4 Converter
Re-encode MPEG-2 video, the format of DVDs, digital TV captures and early-2000s DVD and hard-drive camcorders, into an H.264 MP4 that takes a fraction of the space and plays on phones, tablets and editing apps.
Video Converter
or drop MP4, MOV, MKV … files here ·
Max 95 MB per file· Up to 20 files· Deleted after 30 minutes
Files are processed on our servers and deleted after 30 minutes.
Lower is better quality and a bigger file. 18 looks identical to the source, 23 is the default, 28 and above shows visible softening.
Frames per second. Keep the source rate unless a platform asks for a specific one; 15–20 fps is plenty for GIFs.
Only used for PowerPoint files and single still images: how long each slide or picture stays on screen.
Auto uses AAC for MP4/MOV and Opus for WebM. Copy keeps the original sound untouched when the new format supports it.
192 kbps is transparent for music; 128 kbps is enough for speech.
Width of the animation in pixels; height follows the aspect ratio. 480 px suits chats, 720 px or more gives a high-quality GIF but a much larger file.
GIF holds at most 256 colors. Fewer colors make a smaller file but cause banding on gradients and skin tones.
Mixes palette colors in a fine pattern to hide banding. Sierra gives the smoothest result; none gives the smallest file.
Whether the animation repeats endlessly or plays one time and stops.
Optional. Seconds (e.g. 75) or minutes:seconds (1:15). Leave empty to start at the beginning.
Optional. Same format as the start time. Leave empty to keep everything up to the end.
The converted file will be at or just under this size.
How to use this tool
- 1
Add the .mpeg files
Drag in .mpeg, .mpg or .vob files, up to 20 per batch and 95 MB each. Long recordings may need to be split first.
- 2
Check the quality setting
This page starts at Quality (CRF) 20, a little finer than the usual 23, because MPEG-2 sources already carry compression artifacts that a second pass should not add to.
- 3
Convert to MP4
Press Convert to MP4, then save the files one by one or as a ZIP.
Press Convert to MP4 and the MPEG-2 picture is re-encoded as H.264 with AAC sound. Resolution and frame rate stay as recorded, and the new file is typically much smaller than the original.
MPEG-2 files from DVDs, TV captures and camcorders
MPEG-2 was standardized by ISO and IEC as ISO/IEC 13818 in the mid-1990s and became the video format of DVD-Video, digital satellite and cable TV, and the ATSC and DVB broadcast systems. A file named .mpeg today almost always holds MPEG-2 in a program stream, the same structure as a DVD's VOB files.
You will usually meet it in three places: DVD rips copied off home-made discs, recordings from PC TV tuner cards and DVRs, and footage from camcorders that wrote straight to mini DVDs or hard drives in standard definition. All of them are 720 × 480 (NTSC) or 720 × 576 (PAL), usually interlaced, with bitrates of several megabits per second.
MPEG-2 vs H.264 MP4: what changes
MPEG-2 program stream
Built for DVD players and broadcast decoders.
- Up to 9.8 Mbit/s on DVD
- Interlaced 480i or 576i
- AC-3 or MPEG audio
H.264 MP4
Built for phones, browsers and editing timelines.
- Same resolution, far fewer bits
- Fields kept as recorded
- AAC audio at 192 kbps
MPEG
MPEG video
MPEG (also .mpg) files contain MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video, standards published by the Moving Picture Experts Group from 1993 onward. MPEG-1 was used for Video CDs, and MPEG-2 powers DVDs and digital broadcast television. The codecs are simple and widely supported, but they need much higher bitrates than modern codecs such as H.264 for the same quality. Most desktop players open MPEG, while some phones and web platforms do not.
- Compression
- Lossy
- Transparency
- –
- Animation
- –
- Introduced
- 1993 · Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG)
MP4
MPEG-4 video
MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14) is a multimedia container standardised by ISO/MPEG and based on Apple's QuickTime format. It usually holds H.264 or HEVC video with AAC audio, and can also carry subtitles, chapters and metadata. It is the most compatible video format in the world, playing on phones, browsers, TVs, game consoles and social platforms. The video inside is almost always lossy, so repeated re-encoding gradually reduces quality.
- Compression
- Lossy
- Transparency
- –
- Animation
- –
- Introduced
- 2001 · Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG)
MPEG-2 is the codec of DVDs, TV tuners and DVD camcorders, and people move those recordings to MP4 to get files around a third of the size that phones, tablets and editors open without a DVD player app.
Choosing a quality value for DVD-era footage
- CRF 18
Archival copy of a family DVD
- CRF 20
This page's default
- CRF 23
General viewing on a phone
- CRF 28
Small preview, visible softening
Standard-definition MPEG-2 already contains blocking and mosquito noise around edges. A low CRF value tells H.264 to spend enough bits to reproduce that picture faithfully instead of smearing it further. Because the frame is only 720 pixels wide, even CRF 18 produces a modest file compared with the original.
Leave Resolution on Same as source; the converter never enlarges video, and 480p material shown full screen on a TV looks no better scaled up in a file. If the result has to go out by email, the compress video tool can hit a size limit afterwards. For the older MPEG-1 files from Video CDs, the MPG to MP4 page covers the differences.
MPEG-2 to MP4 questions
Why do moving objects show thin comb lines in my converted DVD video?
DVD and camcorder MPEG-2 is usually interlaced: each frame holds two half-pictures taken 1/60 or 1/50 of a second apart. Advanced settings has no deinterlace switch, so the fields are kept as recorded. TVs and most phones deinterlace on playback; on a computer, VLC's Video → Deinterlace menu hides the lines.
Can I drop the VOB files from a VIDEO_TS folder here?
The upload field accepts .vob, but DVD authoring splits a title into VOB files of up to 1 GB, far above the 95 MB per-file limit. Short menu clips and trimmed VOBs work; for full titles see VOB to MP4, which explains how to get the pieces down to size.
How much smaller will the MP4 be than the MPEG-2 file?
DVD video runs at up to 9.8 Mbit/s, while H.264 reaches the same look with far fewer bits, so an MP4 at CRF 20 is typically a half to a third of the original size. TV captures with lots of grain shrink less, because noise is hard for any codec to compress.
Which sound track ends up in the MP4?
The main audio track, usually AC-3 Dolby Digital or MPEG audio on DVD material, is converted to AAC at 192 kbps. Alternate language tracks and DVD subtitles, which are stored as pictures, are not carried over.
Is MPEG-2 still used today?
Yes. US over-the-air broadcasting under ATSC 1.0 still sends MPEG-2 video, and DVDs are MPEG-2 by definition. The last US patents on MPEG-2 expired in February 2018, which is why free tools decode it without licensing restrictions.