UKC

So I've got some climbing avis from my camera and I want to edit them in i-movie on my brother's mac. It refuses to read them, so is there some way I can convert them to mpegs? Any freeware converters out there, or does one of the standard mac programs do it?

In reply to robin mueller:

Or do is it easier to convert them on my pc first. If so, can someone recommend some freeware?

Cheers

In reply to robin mueller:

Im not sure if it will convert them to MPEG, but i used videora to convert all of my .avi and .mpg video files to .mp4 format so i can put them onto my ipod. Links below, hope its some kind of help!

http://www.videora.com/en-us/

Will

In reply to robin mueller:

balls, sorry, doesnt work on macs try going to the apple website, and clicking on support, and then discussions, where you'll find the forums, theres bound to be something on there about converting video files

In reply to robin mueller:
Download a program called VLC, it won't convert them to MPEG, but you will be able to play and watch them, To edit using imovie I think they must be in DV format, I dunno how you would do that though

In reply to chrispowell:

Yeah, iMovie only reads DV format stuff. Quicktime Pro will do the conversion.

In reply to James Jackson:

Costs money though. Looking for a freeware thing if possible...

In reply to robin mueller:

What you need is a program called DivX Doctor. It'll take your AVIs and output them as .mov files which iMovie will read. It fixes the sound too which is always useful.

If you can't find it (or find that it needs a serial number), email me through the forums and i'll see if I have a copy...

In reply to Matt Wilson:

I managed to get them coverted to quicktime files with clip creator ( http://kozlowski.umesci.maine.edu/clip_creator/index.html )

Though iMovie still isn't interested. Will they definitely work with Divx Doctor you reckon?

In reply to robin mueller:

I believe that they should, yes - .mov is a proprietary Apple movie format after all.

In reply to Matt Wilson: My understanding - I admit I may be completely wrong - is that .mov is a wrapper format, and can contain within it MPEG or other video formats. I believe .avi is the same. If you call up the movie info window when playing a .mov file in QuickTime it will show you the actual video format of the movie. To play MPEG-2 video with QuickTime you need the MPEG -2 Playback Component which costs around £15 to download.

I'm pretty sure iMovie will only accept DV format movies as input, so you need to find a way to export your .avi format movie in DV format. I believe QuickTime Pro should be able to do this for you, or you could try the freeware utility MPEG Streamclip available from http://www.alfanet.it/squared5/mpegstreamclip.html (you may still need the MPEG-2 Playback Component for some of its functions).

I use a combination of QuickTIme Pro with the MPEG-2 Playback Component, and MPEG Streamclip to do my video editing and DVD creation on the Mac. Plus a fair amount of trial and error, it has to be said, along with poking around on the Apple support and discussion forums and other Mac related sites (Google can be your friend here). To get one particulalry recalcitrant MPEG video clip from my digital camera on to DVD I ended up having to manipulate the video using QuickTime, but that lost the audio so I had to extract that separately using MPEG Streamclip, and then re-combine the two streams in iMovie. The end result was surprisingly good!

AVI is a container format. What's inside can be almost anything. MPEG isn't a format either - it's a group that define different formats (MPEG 1, 2 and 4). So essentially your question is "I want to turn x into y where x and y can be anything". Use mplayer to find out what they are, the included mencoder will transcode the movie for you once you know what it is. Oh and the format of the audio channel could be one of a load of things too.

In reply to Martin W:


Brilliant, mpegstreamclip seems to do the trick. Cheers.

In reply to Philip:

Mplayer seems a little involved for me. Seems like you need to compile it from source... Sounds like it's probably a good piece of software, but it would take a while to get working and I don't really need all the clever stuff it does. Thanks anyway though.

I did download a mencoder as well, but that didn't really work, or at least it probably required fiddling with a bit.

In reply to anyone interested:

Next problem was that imovie wasn't interested in mp3's or wav files. Found a handy app that converts mp3's to AIFF files which imovie likes. In case anyone has had the same problems as me, here's the download:

http://www.webmasterfree.com/software/MediaTools/MiscMP3Tools/mp3-to-aiff.h...

In reply to robin mueller:

I've been working my way through these two sites for a few weeks, but they may be only for PCs :

http://www.divx-digest.com/index.html

http://www.doom9.org/

(the name of the latter is nothing to do with the content!)

The subject of video files, signals, standards and so on seems somewhat complex (!), especially as many of the terms are misused , file formats confused with video standards etc. Good luck.

In reply to Bruce Hooker:

They look useful, I'll check them out when next I have a problem...

I do have a PC, and I was previously using moviemaker (the standard comes-with-new-pcs package) to make little movies. I have to say it's a lot less picky about file formats than iMovie, and possibly more intuitive to use. It does crash more though.

Anyway, the pc with moviemaker on has become unavailable, so I was forced to use the mac.I found that this:
http://www.alfanet.it/squared5/mpegstreamclip.html
Was brilliant for converting movies to whatver you need (inc. iMovie DV files).

And this http://www.webmasterfree.com/software/MediaTools/MiscMP3Tools/mp3-to-aiff.h...
(also works for pcs) converted MP3s to iMovie compatible AIFF files. Though why you'd want to do that on a pc I'm not sure. I'm sure there must be a reason, but I haven't needed it yet - I've always just used wavs to make movies on the pc. Perhaps I'm being ignorant, who knows?

Anyway, this page contains everything I've done:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/southlancsbouldering/movies.htm

One of these days maybe I'll get my hands on a proper digital camcorder, rather than just the video function on my camera... though I've got a feeling I'll need a better computer first... ah well. It is an addictive pastime, this movie fiddling. amazing how many hours it can take just to edit a minute or two of footage...