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quiklee · Nov 17, 2005, 03:01 PM

Does anyone know of the best conversion program out there? I just made the switch to apple and want to transfer some of my old AVI files I made through Premiere on my PC to my apple, but QT aint' having none of it and won't play anything. I put in 100's of hours of work into those videos and want to be able to show them off on my front row. Please, someone help!

analogika · Nov 17, 2005, 03:21 PM

ffmpegX

ism · Nov 17, 2005, 03:43 PM

2nd for ffmpegX

Not the best GUI, but getting better. Worth the shareware price since you can use it for so many things. If you haven't found it yet it's here: http://homepage.mac.com/major4/

Uncle Skeleton · Nov 17, 2005, 05:09 PM

No don't!

Chances are you don't have to re-encode them, and if you don't have to you don't want to, trust me. What codec are they in now? Open them in QT (ignore the warning) and look in the Info window (cmd-i). What does it say under Format?

Did you install divx and the various delegate components? Have you tried Divx Doctor?

ism · Nov 17, 2005, 05:48 PM

Uncle Skeleton,

Very Good point. Yeah, if the Divx components don't do it perhaps a component purchased from http://www.flip4mac.com might?

Jacke · Nov 17, 2005, 06:34 PM

Originally Posted by ism

Yeah, if the Divx components don't do it perhaps a component purchased from http://www.flip4mac.com might?

Probably not, Flip4Mac doesn't do anything with AVI files (that I know of).

quiklee · Nov 18, 2005, 01:52 AM

this is what i get . . .

MPEG-4 Video, 640 x 480, Millions
16-bit Integer (Little Endian), Stereo, 44.100 kHz

so umm . . why doesn't it play?

ism · Nov 18, 2005, 02:15 AM

Jacke,

Yep, you're right. I'm getting my AVI + WMV confused.

ism · Nov 18, 2005, 04:32 AM

Quiklee,

MPEG-4 is a massive standard with lots of sub-sections on how things are encoded, etc. Typically what happens is that a codec implements part of this standard but refers to itself as mpeg-4 video, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the same as another 'mpeg-4' video or that just because a player (Quicktime, Windows Media Player, etc) is touted as capable of playing MPEG-4 that it can play every 'mpeg-4' video out there.

I don't fully understand it so I apologise for that cruddy explanation.

Anyway, as mentioned by Unkle_Skeleton try the divx component:

http://www.divxmovies.com/codec/
http://www.3ivx.com/download/macos.html <-- I think Quicktime 6+ has this built in anyway?

http://www.3ivx.com/divxdoctor/ <-- Try this if you have issues with Quicktime not decoding the audio correctly

memento · Nov 18, 2005, 08:10 AM

I'm late to this thread, but agree fully with Unkle_Skeleton. re-encoding always causes a loss in quality and quicktime can actually play almost anything.

I personally prefer the 3ivx component as opposed to the divx, but either one should work.

And for me, when all else fails, I play them with mplayer.

quiklee · Nov 18, 2005, 12:46 PM

The main reason I want to convert my avi to a mov file is so that I can edit it on imovie . . . . i was hoping to get this editing done before the holidays to send out to friends . . . dilemmas suck and when things don't work out the way their suppose to . . .sucks even harder!

quiklee · Nov 18, 2005, 01:08 PM

I just went to http://www.3ivx.com/divxdoctor and installed the following codec - MS-MPEG4v1 and everything works fine now. Thanks Everyone for helping me out! btw, if you're having the same problem, the codec isn't available on the 3ivx site. Instead, you have to do a google search and find a site . . . took me a couple of tries, but I got it.