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danbrew · Feb 10, 2002, 02:27 PM

Does anyone know if there is an easy way to convert AVI movies to Quicktime (MOV)? I have gigabytes of AVI movies that I have already brought over from DV and would like to use them in iMovie & iDVD.

Thanks - danbrew

lucylawless · Feb 10, 2002, 04:14 PM

I was ready to tell you to search the forums for DivX, but it sounds like these movies are compressed with DV instead. Either way, what you need to do is just open them in Quicktime and choose Save As... from the file menu. Make sure "Save Normally" is selected and save it. Then (and this is where I'm guessing) you can open your new movie file in iMovie or iDVD. be sure not to throw away the avi files, though, because the small mov files depend on them (anything that comes out of iMovie or iDVD, however, will be independent)

andymcdeee · Feb 10, 2002, 07:47 PM

...so long as you have quicktime pro .... right? Maybe the normal one can do it too.

danbrew · Feb 10, 2002, 08:43 PM

$30 upgrade to the Quicktime Pro player - works great. Thanks everybody.

Bought via the Apple webpage and simply downloaded a new product key.

:->

[ 02-10-2002: Message edited by: danbrew ]

danbrew · Feb 10, 2002, 09:05 PM

damn - it won't do sound... any ideas?

Feb 11, 2002, 06:56 PM

thought as to no sound did you export as an .AIFF??

danbrew · Feb 12, 2002, 05:37 PM

It doesn't really give me a choice to save as AIFF. There are a bunch of choices under "Export", but AIFF isn't one of them. I was on hold for Apple support for about 45 minutes yesterday and the guy I spoke with had no clue. He's researching and I'm supposed to get an email from somebody.

Any specific pointers would really be appreciated.

thanks - danbrew

lucylawless · Feb 12, 2002, 06:05 PM

wait, so when you play your AVI, it has sound, but under "Export...", there's no option for "Sound to AIFF"? That is strange.

when you open the AVI, choose Movie->Get Movie Properties (command-j), select the audio track and "format" and tell us what that says.

Also, I don't know if the Apple guy said this already (I should have noticed for my first post, too), if you want to use these files in iApps, you have to Export to DV Stream, not Quicktime Movie, and you can't just save as a quicktime movie. Did you try this already, and if not, does the sound work then?

Chuck_star · Feb 12, 2002, 10:31 PM

Go to http://divx.jamby.net/
Download the DivOSX-download file
Open get avi
Choose the flick
Choose the destination
Enjoy

PS takes seconds to do a 600mb file.yahoo!

danbrew · Feb 14, 2002, 09:36 AM

Lucy - so what you're saying is it is a two-step process? I need to export the sound to AIFF and then the AVI to MOV? And then later combine the two in my editing package?

Isn't that the dumbest thing - why in the world would you not be able to export it all at once and have one file?

Jansar · Feb 14, 2002, 09:39 AM

Originally posted by danbrew:
<STRONG>Lucy - so what you're saying is it is a two-step process? I need to export the sound to AIFF and then the AVI to MOV? And then later combine the two in my editing package?

Isn't that the dumbest thing - why in the world would you not be able to export it all at once and have one file?</STRONG>

Well, you want your movie to play, don't you?

danbrew · Feb 14, 2002, 10:46 AM

well, duh. really - it's a two step process? Does anyone know of a way to take AVI or MPG movies with sound and convert them to a format for use in iMovie or FCP3? I realize that I could simply take the source tape and capture it to disk again, but that's time consuming.

I'm shocked there isn't a better way to do this...

I'm going to stop by the Apple store later today and see if anyone there has suggestions...

FXWizard · Feb 14, 2002, 03:51 PM

There's an app called bbDEMUX that will split the audio track from the file and then you can combine it back with the video in iMovie.

It's not elegant but it's a solution; it's what I use to process mpg files that lose sound when I convert them to DV. I think the audio loss has to do with the codec used to create the files but I could be wrong.

lucylawless · Feb 15, 2002, 02:16 AM

Originally posted by danbrew:
<STRONG>Lucy - so what you're saying is it is a two-step process? I need to export the sound to AIFF and then the AVI to MOV? And then later combine the two in my editing package?

Isn't that the dumbest thing - why in the world would you not be able to export it all at once and have one file?</STRONG>

no, it shouldn't be a two step process. If all goes as planned, if you can open an AVI in quicktime pro, you should be able to choose File->Export (command-E) and choose Movie to Quicktime, and pick separate video and sound settings, and the resulting file will by muxed (the only problem here is that Quicktime lacks an mp3 encoder, so if you want mp3 audio you have to export the audio separately, or open the movie in iTunes to encode an mp3. Incidentally, you can re-combine the different tracks very easily in QTPro with copy/add (in the edit menu)). For use in iMovie, you will need to export to DV Stream, instead of Quicktime Movie. I've never done this, but the audio should be retained in this case as well.

The reason I asked about exporting to AIFF, is because of your comment "damn, it won't do sound." The sound should work just fine, but just because it should work doesn't mean you won't find bizarre cases of individual files that reveal bugs in quicktime.

I can't really help you any more unless you clarify what you mean by "it won't do sound", and if it really doesn't work, tell me what format quicktime thinks the audio is in.

That goes for any file quicktime can play except MPEG. MPEG is just special, and you can export video but not audio. To edit both tracks of an MPEG movie, you need to demux it (as mentioned, BBDemux is a good free tool for this; find it on versiontracker.com).

pdot · Feb 16, 2002, 02:06 PM

the only time I have problems with exporting both A & V is with MPEGs. It should really only be a one step process with AVIs. Must be a problem with the file. Have you tried it with other AVIs?