Convert MPEG to MP4
MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 videos come from the era before MP4 - Video CDs, DVD-authored streams, old TV tuner captures, home movies transferred from VHS through digitising tools. They use compression that predates MP4 by a decade, which means modern devices refuse them: iOS, Android, Chrome, Safari, most smart TVs. Wave decodes the old MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 picture and audio, re-encodes them into modern H.264 and AAC, and hands you an MP4 that plays on every current device. All in your browser.
What actually changes
MPEG-1 System Streams (.mpg, .mpeg) held the VCD-era video codec plus MP2 audio. MPEG-2 Program Streams held the DVD-era codec plus AC-3 or MP2 audio. MP4 accepts neither video codec, so this conversion is always a re-encode.
Wave prefers your browser's WebCodecs H.264 encoder - hardware-accelerated on almost every modern laptop - and falls back to the LGPL MPEG-4 Part 2 encoder inside the wasm core when the browser has no H.264 encoder to expose. Audio always re-encodes to AAC. Interlaced sources (common for MPEG-2 DVD rips) get a yadif de-interlace on the transcode path before the encoder sees the frames, so the MP4 plays cleanly on progressive displays.
MPEG-1 shipped in 1993 and was designed around one target: fit 74 minutes of watchable video and CD-quality audio onto a 650 MB Video CD. Its resolution ceiling was 352x240 (NTSC) or 352x288 (PAL) at 1.15 Mbps for the video track and 224 kbps MP2 for the audio. Every VCD from that era, every early digital-camera video clip, and a lot of early web downloads sit in MPEG-1 files. MPEG-2 followed in 1996 with much higher bitrates (up to 15 Mbps for DVDs and up to 80 Mbps for broadcast HD), and became the standard for DVDs, over-the-air digital TV, and early PVRs like TiVo.
Neither codec plays natively in modern browsers or on iOS. MPEG-2 was patent-encumbered for decades, which is why Windows Media Player used to ship without an MPEG-2 decoder unless you bought a DVD player app for it. Those patents expired in 2018, but iOS and Android still do not carry MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 decoders because the codecs were never architecturally competitive for streaming. Converting to H.264 in MP4 is the pragmatic archive path.
Three steps.
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Step 1
Drop the MPEG (.mpg / .mpeg) file onto the card.
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Step 2
Wave shows Re-encode needed - MPEG legacy codecs always take this path.
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Step 3
Convert and save the MP4.
Answers, specifically.
What's the difference between MPEG-1 and MPEG-2?
MPEG-1 was for CD-based Video CD; MPEG-2 was for DVD. Different resolutions, different quality, but the same container conventions.
Does the DVD-quality look worse in MP4?
Not noticeably. Wave targets a bitrate that preserves visible detail. Interlacing artefacts, if any, survive as-is - deinterlace at a later step if you need to.
Can Wave rip a DVD?
No. DVDs use CSS encryption plus VOB file structure spread across a disc image. Wave converts individual files that you already have on disk.
What about surround audio?
The current build outputs stereo AAC. Multi-channel audio pass-through is on the roadmap.
Are the MPG and MPEG extensions the same file?
Yes. Different extensions, identical container. Wave treats them the same.
What is the difference between MPEG-1 and MPEG-2?
MPEG-1 was Video CD-era (1993): 352x240 or 352x288 at 1.15 Mbps, MP2 audio. MPEG-2 was DVD-era (1996): up to 720x576 SD or 1920x1080 HD, up to 80 Mbps, AC-3 or MP2 audio, plus support for interlaced fields and multiple audio tracks. Wave handles both through the same re-encode path.
DVD rips play out of sync. Can Wave fix it?
Some DVD rippers produce MPEG streams with broken timing at chapter boundaries or during pause/resume gaps. Wave applies ffmpeg's +genpts flag, which regenerates presentation timestamps from scratch and usually fixes the drift. If sync is still off after conversion, the issue is in the DVD rip itself and needs re-ripping.
The playback speed looks fast or slow after conversion.
That is almost always a PAL / NTSC frame-rate mismatch: a PAL source (25 fps) played as NTSC (29.97 fps) plays 20% too fast. Wave preserves the source frame rate; if your source itself was wrongly-flagged during ripping, use a command-line ffmpeg with '-r 25' to force the correct rate.