MPEG-2 to OGV Converter

MPEG-2 to OGV Converter

.mpeg2 is an MPEG-2 program stream: the DVD-Video and early-digital-broadcast format whose video layer is standardised as ITU-T H.262, first approved in July 1995 and produced jointly with ISO/IEC. .ogv is the video profile of Ogg, the open, royalty-free container from the Xiph.Org Foundation. The conversion exists for one honest reason — an open-formats-only pipeline that has standardised on Ogg — and this page is written so you can tell whether that is actually you. One thing to correct up front, because it is widely misreported: this converter writes VP8 into the Ogg container by default, not Theora. Theora is offered as the legacy alternative.

MPEG-2 Source at a Glance

OGV Output at a Glance

How to Convert MPEG-2 to OGV

1. Upload Your MPEG-2 File: Drag and drop your .mpeg2 file onto the page or click "+ Add Files" to browse. Queue several clips and they convert with identical settings.
2. Choose the Video Codec and Audio Codec: In Advanced Options, Video Codec offers VP8 (the default) and Theora; Audio Codec offers Vorbis (the default), Opus, FLAC and Speex. Switch to Theora only when the destination explicitly asks for Ogg/Theora.
3. Set File Compression and Video resolution: File Compression opens on Quality Preset, which defaults to "Very High (Recommended)". Video resolution stays on Keep original unless you change it — the presets from 4320p down to 144p set height and let width follow the source aspect. Trim exports a Time Range instead of the whole file.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and download the .ogv. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark.

VP8 vs Theora Inside the Ogg Container

The two codecs do not just differ in efficiency; they change which rate-control modes are usable, because VP8 has no CRF mode at all while Theora has its own quantizer scale.

The practical rule on this page: do not use Constant Quality with VP8. VP8 is not a CRF codec, so selecting that mode produces neither a quality target nor a bitrate target — the encoder simply falls back to its built-in quantizer bounds and encodes whatever it likes. Leave Quality Preset alone for a normal conversion, or pick Constraint Quality with a Max bitrate, or one of the bitrate modes, if you need to control size. With Theora selected the same Constant Quality option becomes usable, because a 0–10 slider appears alongside it.

What DVD-Era Sources Bring With Them

Two properties of DVD and broadcast MPEG-2 survive the conversion unchanged, and both surprise people:

• Interlacing is not removed. There is no deinterlacing anywhere in this pipeline. If the source is 480i or 576i, the two woven fields stay woven, and horizontal comb lines will show on motion when the file is played back progressively. Deinterlace with a desktop tool before uploading if that matters.
• Non-square pixels are not corrected. Anamorphic widescreen DVD stores a 16:9 picture in a 720×480 or 720×576 frame using a non-square pixel aspect. Any resize on this page normalises the pixel aspect to square, so an anamorphic source that relies on the flag will come out geometrically wrong. Work around it by choosing Width x Height and entering the display dimensions you actually want — for example 854×480 for a 16:9 NTSC DVD — instead of a percentage or a height preset.

Also worth knowing: re-encoding is one-way. MPEG-2 is lossy, VP8 and Theora are lossy, and the output can match the source at best. Upscaling a 480i DVD to 1080p only enlarges pixels.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the OGV output use Theora by default?

No — it uses VP8. This gets stated the wrong way round in a lot of places because Ogg video was originally built around Theora, but on this page Theora is the alternative you opt into, not the default. VP8 is the better encoder of the two and is the same codec that early WebM shipped with. Pick Theora only when the receiving system explicitly requires an Ogg/Theora bitstream.

Will an .ogv file play in a browser today?

Ogg/Theora effectively does not. Chrome disabled it by default from version 120 and Chromium removed it in 123, Edge from 122 and Opera from 106; Firefox disabled it by default in version 126; Safari never had it. Global support sits around 5.8%. VP8 inside an Ogg container is an even narrower case — browsers that decode VP8 do so in WebM, not in Ogg — so treat .ogv output as a file for desktop players such as VLC and mpv, not as a web-delivery format. For the web, use MPEG-2 to WebM, which is the open format browsers actually decode at around 96% support.

Why does the Constant Quality option do nothing when VP8 is selected?

Because VP8 has no constant-rate-factor mode. On CRF codecs that option feeds a quality number straight to the encoder, but VP8 uses quantizer bounds and a target bitrate instead, so selecting Constant Quality with VP8 sends neither a quality figure nor a bitrate — you can see this in the interface, where the option appears with no numeric control underneath it. The encoder falls back to its internal defaults and you lose control over the result. Use Quality Preset, Constraint Quality with a Max bitrate, or a bitrate mode. Selecting Theora instead makes Constant Quality meaningful again, because Theora exposes a 0–10 quality slider.

My DVD footage is interlaced — does this deinterlace it?

No. Nothing in this pipeline deinterlaces, so 480i or 576i material keeps its field structure and the resulting file will show comb lines on movement when played progressively. That is a genuine limitation rather than a setting you have missed. If you need progressive output, deinterlace with a desktop tool such as a DVD ripper, HandBrake or an FFmpeg filter before uploading, then convert the progressive result here.

My widescreen DVD comes out stretched or squashed — why?

Because anamorphic DVD stores a 16:9 image inside a 720×480 or 720×576 frame using non-square pixels, and the display aspect lives in a flag rather than in the pixel grid. Resizing on this page normalises the pixel aspect to square, which discards that flag, so the geometry ends up wrong. The fix is to state the geometry explicitly: select Width x Height under Video resolution and enter the display dimensions you want — around 854×480 for a 16:9 NTSC disc, or 1024×576 for a 16:9 PAL disc — rather than using a percentage or a height preset.

Which audio codecs can the Ogg video file carry here?

Four appear in the Audio Codec list: Vorbis (the default), Opus, FLAC and Speex. Vorbis is the pairing the Ogg video profile was designed around and is what any Ogg-consuming tool will expect; Opus is the modern Xiph codec and the safer choice if the destination accepts it. FLAC gives you a lossless audio track inside the video file, which is rarely worthwhile since the source audio is already lossy AC-3 or MP2. Speex is a speech-only codec that Xiph.Org has formally obsoleted in favour of Opus — avoid it for anything but voice.

Do the resolution presets change my aspect ratio?

No. The presets from 4320p down to 144p set the height only, and the width follows whatever aspect the source frame has, so a preset never squeezes or stretches the picture on its own. That does mean you cannot use a preset to fix an anamorphic source — for that you need the explicit Width x Height route described above.

Should I just convert to WebM instead?

For almost every purpose, yes. WebM is the open, royalty-free format that succeeded Ogg for web video, it sits at roughly 96% browser support against Ogg/Theora's ~5.8%, and VP9 compresses considerably better than either codec offered here — MPEG-2 to WebM is the direct equivalent. Stay on OGV only when something concrete requires it: an archive that standardised on Ogg, a platform that accepts only Ogg uploads, or a free-software policy that names the container. If you already have .ogv files and want to move forward, OGV to WebM handles the other direction.

Is there a file size limit, and what happens to my upload?

There is no fixed per-file quota — the practical constraint on a long DVD-sourced MPEG-2 is upload size and time over your own connection. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. Nothing is watermarked, shared or made public, and no sign-up is required.