ODG to MPG Converter
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Supports: ODG
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Need help?ODG to MPG: A Drawing Rendered into a Legacy MPEG Stream
.odg is OpenDocument Graphics — the drawing format LibreOffice Draw and Apache OpenOffice Draw write, part of the OASIS OpenDocument family published as ISO/IEC 26300, whose 1.3 revision became an OASIS Standard in 2021. .mpg sits at the other end of the age range: an MPEG program stream, the wrapper built around MPEG-2 video (ITU-T H.262 / ISO/IEC 13818-2) that DVD-era authoring tools, older editing suites and industrial playout boxes still ingest. This page renders your drawing on our servers and encodes each page as a silent held frame in that stream.
How to Convert ODG to MPG
- Upload Your ODG File: Drop the
.odgon the page or click "+ Add Files". Merge strategy decides what happens with several files: "Merge images" builds one stream holding each drawing in turn, "Video per image" writes one.mpgeach. - Pick the Video Codec: Video Codec offers exactly two entries here — MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 — with MPEG-2 selected by default. Keep MPEG-2 unless the target device predates it.
- Set the Image Duration and Video Resolution: Image Duration → Duration controls how long each page is held (5 seconds per frame by default, from a 1/60-second single frame up to 10 seconds). Video resolution starts on "Keep original"; Preset Resolutions set the height and let the width follow the page's aspect, while Fixed Resolutions and Width x Height pin both.
- Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save the
.mpg. The upload travels over an encrypted connection, the render and encode run on our servers, and both the source and the result are deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.
Where the Frame Size Comes From — and Which Quality Control Works
Two things about this page routinely surprise people, and both are worth knowing before you spend a conversion.
The frame size comes from the drawing's physical page, rendered at 300 DPI. An A4 page therefore arrives at roughly 2480 x 3508 pixels and a US Letter page at about 2550 x 3300 — print-grade dimensions, and enormous by MPEG standards. Whatever you had zoomed to on screen is irrelevant. Because MPEG-2 enforces a minimum bitrate that scales with the pixel count, leaving this on "Keep original" produces a far larger file than the content deserves. Set a deliberate raster under Video resolution: 720 x 480 or 720 x 576 for DVD-era gear, 1280 x 720 for anything more modern.
The quality controls behave differently per codec, and on the default codec they barely bite. Our MPEG-2 encoder has no CRF mode: a Constant Quality or Constraint Quality request is converted into a bitrate target derived from the frame size and encoded to that instead, with a resolution-based floor beneath it. Frame size is the real lever there. Choose MPEG-1 and you get the generic quality path instead, where the value maps to ffmpeg's 1–31 scale — lower is better, so drag it down toward 2–5 if you switch.
Bitrate and target-file-size modes are hidden on this page by design: a still drawing has no source bitrate for them to scale against, so only Quality Preset, Constant Quality and Constraint Quality appear.
MPEG-1 vs MPEG-2 on This Page
| MPEG-1 | MPEG-2 (default) | |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | ISO/IEC 11172-2, MPEG-1 Video | ITU-T H.262 / ISO/IEC 13818-2, first approved 1995 |
| Our encoder path | Generic encoder taking a 1–31 quality value | Dedicated MPEG-2 encoder with a bitrate floor |
| Constant Quality | Emits -q:v, 1–31, lower is better |
Converted to a bitrate target — the slider is effectively inert |
| Chroma | 4:2:0 | 4:2:0 in this configuration |
| Reach | VCD-era players, very old capture boxes | DVD-era authoring, broadcast ingest, most desktop players |
| Sensible use for a drawing | Only if MPEG-2 is rejected | The default; leave it alone |
What the Finished .mpg Contains
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Container | MPEG program stream (the file opens with a 00 00 01 BA pack header) |
| Video codec | MPEG-2 video, 4:2:0 |
| Frame rate | 1 fps — each still is re-emitted once per second of hold time |
| Audio | None; the Audio Codec group does not render, because a drawing carries no sound |
| Duration | Image Duration per drawing page, summed across the document |
| Transparency | Not carried; unpainted areas take the Background Color, which opens on White |
When This Doesn't Work
The common disappointment here is DVD authoring: a .mpg from this page is not a DVD-compliant stream. DVD-Video constrains resolution, frame rate, bitrate and audio, and this file is silent, runs at 1 fps and is whatever size you chose. Author the disc in a dedicated tool and feed it this file as source material rather than as a finished asset. The second is fonts — they are resolved on our servers, so a drawing that depends on a typeface installed only on your own machine can reflow; convert the text to curves in Draw (Shape ▸ Convert ▸ To Curve) before uploading if the letterforms matter. And if a device refuses the file outright, try ODG to MP4 instead: MPEG-2 in a program stream is a 1990s combination, and plenty of modern software has quietly dropped it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why would anyone convert a drawing to MPG instead of an image?
Only because something downstream insists on video. Legacy playout boxes, old non-linear editors, some broadcast ingest queues and certain kiosk players accept .mpg and nothing else, and a diagram that has to sit on screen inside one of those pipelines has to become a stream. If your destination will take a picture, an image target is smaller, sharper and faster.
Will the MPG move or make any sound?
No, on both counts. Each drawing page is one static image, so the encoder holds a rendered frame for the duration you set and emits it at 1 fps. There is no audio track at all — the Audio Codec group does not even render on this page — and a probe of a finished file shows exactly one stream in the container.
Which codec does the .mpg actually use, and can I change it?
MPEG-2 by default, which is what the extension implies for almost every tool that still reads .mpg. The Video Codec group also offers MPEG-1 for genuinely ancient targets. There is no H.264 option here, because H.264 inside a .mpg wrapper is not something legacy readers expect — if you want modern compression, choose a different container such as ODG to MP4.
Why does changing the quality slider barely change my MPEG-2 file?
Because the MPEG-2 encoder has no quality-based rate control. Handed a Constant Quality or Constraint Quality request it rewrites that into a bitrate target computed from the frame's pixel count, then encodes to the target, and it will not go below the minimum bitrate that resolution requires. The knob that genuinely changes an MPEG-2 output is Video resolution. On MPEG-1 the picture is different: there the quality value maps to a 1–31 scale and does move the result.
My ODG has several drawing pages — do they become scenes?
They become held frames rather than scenes. Each page is rendered and shown in turn for the Image Duration inside a single stream, in page order, with no transitions between them. If you want a separate .mpg per page, save the pages as individual .odg files in LibreOffice Draw, upload them together and set Merge strategy to "Video per image".
Why is my MPEG-2 file bigger than an H.264 file of the same drawing?
MPEG-2 is a 1990s codec with far weaker prediction and entropy coding than H.264, and our encoder additionally enforces a bitrate floor rather than letting a static frame collapse to almost nothing. The gap widens sharply at larger frame sizes, which is why a "Keep original" 300 DPI render is the worst case: the same drawing in an MP4 at 1080p will be a fraction of the size.
The colours in my diagram shifted after converting — why?
Two things happen on the way to a video frame. First, the page is flattened, so anything unpainted picks up the Background Color — White by default here. Second, MPEG-2 stores colour in 4:2:0, which keeps full detail in brightness but halves the colour resolution in both directions, so thin saturated lines, especially red on white, can look slightly soft or fringed. Thickening hairlines in Draw before converting, or choosing a larger frame size, both help.
What happens to my file after the conversion?
It is uploaded over an encrypted connection, rendered and encoded on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours later together with the .mpg we produced. Nothing is published or shared, no account is needed, and no watermark is applied. The ODG converter hub lists the other targets if .mpg turns out to be the wrong one.