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Convert MOV to AVI?

~Shard~

~Shard~

macrumors P6
Original poster
Jun 4, 2003
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1123.6536.5321
Did a quick search, couldn't find anything, and my brain isn't working the best today so I'm sure the answer is simple... :eek: ;)

Anyway, just made a nice slideshow in iPhoto and exported it to a movie - the resulting file is a MOV file, which is all well and good for me, however I want to send it to some friends who don't have Macs and may not be able to watch MOV files.

1) Is watching MOV files on a PC an issue if they don't have QT installed? Will WMP play them? If so, diregard my question.
2) If not, how would I go about converting my MOV file to an AVI (or MPEG I suppose) file, which they can in all likelihood watch with greater ease using WMP or the like?

Thanks guys.
 
1) It depends. ;-)

2) MPEG Streamripper. It's free. Go google!

The Void
.................
I'm shurr yul all agree, that was a greet vido!
 
I thought there was a way to export it with a different extension. Is there not a way to do this in quicktime either?
 
Boelman said:
I thought there was a way to export it with a different extension. Is there not a way to do this in quicktime either?
Click to expand...

Yeah, maybe I'll check out QT to see what its export options are. Otherwise Thanks The Void I'll try grabbing that nice free app you suggested. :)
 
MOVs and MPGs are far more universally playable on Macs/PCs than simple AVIs.

IMO AVIs are total garbage, they can be 10000 different codecs, all of which have no names and arent easily recognizable.

If the person has QT on his/her computer, windows or not, a MOV will play.

No one converts TO avi, they convert FROM it.
 
exactally what i was thinking. however, is there a free way to do that? you know, export a video to quicktime with the exact same framerate, etc but just .mov? i tried ffmpegX and it dosne't work well at all. it always give me 0 byte empty files.
 
Sdashiki said:
MOVs and MPGs are far more universally playable on Macs/PCs than simple AVIs.

IMO AVIs are total garbage, they can be 10000 different codecs, all of which have no names and arent easily recognizable.

If the person has QT on his/her computer, windows or not, a MOV will play.

No one converts TO avi, they convert FROM it.
Click to expand...

Okay, good to know. Well, maybe I'll just send them the MOV file then and hope they can play it using WMP. Just wanted to make things easy for them, they are Windows users after all... ;) :)
 
They should be able to play a mov file on their windows machine, because I can switch back and forth on mine.
 
~Shard~ said:
Did a quick search, couldn't find anything, and my brain isn't working the best today so I'm sure the answer is simple... :eek: ;)

Anyway, just made a nice slideshow in iPhoto and exported it to a movie - the resulting file is a MOV file, which is all well and good for me, however I want to send it to some friends who don't have Macs and may not be able to watch MOV files.

1) Is watching MOV files on a PC an issue if they don't have QT installed? Will WMP play them? If so, diregard my question.
2) If not, how would I go about converting my MOV file to an AVI (or MPEG I suppose) file, which they can in all likelihood watch with greater ease using WMP or the like?

Thanks guys.
Click to expand...
The short answer to your question is to get QuickTime Pro and the DivX 6 QuickTime codec. However, my survey of my favorite [p0rn] sites indicates that a decreasing percentage of postings are in .avi format. An increasing percentage of postings are in .mpg format.
 
I highly recommend downloading ffmpegx (free) and using it to convert your videos to whatever format you like. It reads and writes almost any video file type (except WMV3). So you can convert from MOV to AVI (divx), for instance. Works quick too and output looks good.

Personally, I usually go the other way, converting weird format files to Quicktime H.264.
 
~Shard~ said:
they are Windows users after all...
Click to expand...
Which means that their spyware and virus protection programs will likely quarantine your movie as potentially vicious, they'll delete it out of habit, and any efforts you make to convert it to an .avi will be wasted.
:p
 
emw said:
Which means that their spyware and virus protection programs will likely quarantine your movie as potentially vicious, they'll delete it out of habit, and any efforts you make to convert it to an .avi will be wasted.
:p
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking. ;)

Thanks guys for all your input. :cool:
 
Sdashiki said:
MOVs and MPGs are far more universally playable on Macs/PCs than simple AVIs.

IMO AVIs are total garbage, they can be 10000 different codecs, all of which have no names and arent easily recognizable.

If the person has QT on his/her computer, windows or not, a MOV will play.

No one converts TO avi, they convert FROM it.
Click to expand...

Wrong.

.avi and .mov are both container formats which allow the use of multiple codecs. Neither Windows nor Mac support DIVX by default, yet both QuickTime and WMP can playback divx with the DIVX codec installed.

As for this thread's question, if you have QT Pro, simply do a file->Export and choose MKovie to AVI.

If you want my oppinion though, you should tell your friends to install teh free QuickTime player for windows. Many web sites use QuickTime, if you use iTunes on Windows, you'll need QT etc. It's free, easy to install, so why not?
 
plastique45 said:
Wrong.

.avi and .mov are both container formats which allow the use of multiple codecs. Neither Windows nor Mac support DIVX by default, yet both QuickTime and WMP can playback divx with the DIVX codec installed.
Click to expand...

Cool, thanks for the clarification on this.

plastique45 said:
If you want my oppinion though, you should tell your friends to install teh free QuickTime player for windows. Many web sites use QuickTime, if you use iTunes on Windows, you'll need QT etc. It's free, easy to install, so why not?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I thought of that, it's just that my friends are lazy. ;) So, I'll probably send them the MOV file, and if they won't be able to play it right off the bat, they'll probbaly never watch it. ;)
 
IEatApples said:
You could send them the QuickTime installer as well.;)
Click to expand...

Isn't the Windows version bundled with iTunes though, so they would have to install both? Not that it really matters of course... :eek: ;)
 
~Shard~ said:
Isn't the Windows version bundled with iTunes though, so they would have to install both?
Click to expand...

Yes, you need the current vesion of Quicktime to use the current version of iTunes. On the Windows end, the update handles both; on the Mac it's two separate updates. So if you have iTunes installed on Windows, you have Quicktime as well.
 
jimthorn said:
Yes, you need the current vesion of Quicktime to use the current version of iTunes. On the Windows end, the update handles both; on the Mac it's two separate updates. So if you have iTunes installed on Windows, you have Quicktime as well.
Click to expand...

Thought as much - again, thanks for the clarification. :)
 
MisterMe said:
The short answer to your question is to get QuickTime Pro and the DivX 6 QuickTime codec. However, my survey of my favorite [p0rn] sites indicates that a decreasing percentage of postings are in .avi format. An increasing percentage of postings are in .mpg format.
Click to expand...


im finding a huge increase in XVID encoded avis, which is Divx at the heart of it but still slightly better.

MPGs, unless MP4 are on the way out cuz pr0n videos used to be MPEG1, whose quality sucks.
 
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