converting quicktime .mov

[Vicki]

Hi all-
I am helping my brother with a video. He has about 50 1 minute video files in quicktime .mov, unfortunately at 320x240, 15 fps, and lots and lots of photos. The .mov files act strangely in the VS10+ timeline, so I will have to convert them.

I downloaded a couple of free converters. IMTOOMOV Converter and Dr. DivX.

If I convert them to a regular .avi's, each file is about 200 MB, mpeg's about 13 mb and divx avi about 10 mb, though it varies from file to file. In my own projects, I use .avi, but the potential converted size of all these files is daunting.

Also, the converted divx files have a divx watermark in the bottom corner in clip playback, which does not seem to show up in project playback. I don't know if it will appear in the rendered project.

Would it be advisable to convert and edit in mpeg or divx? Any forseeable problems? Do you recommend a different converter?

Thanks,
Vicki

[Ken Berry]

If your intention is to burn a DVD, then DivX is most definitely NOT the way to go. .MOV is a highly compressed format, as is DivX though it uses quite different algorithms. DivX quality is usually quite good.

But that is not the point. A standard video DVD can only use mpeg-2 format video which fits within certain parameters. So if you are going to convert the .mov format to anything, it should be to .mpeg-2. The main downside to that is that mpeg is a somewhat difficult format to edit. But then again, so is .mov!

Converting to uncompressed .avi could give you decent quality on that conversion, though that is not guaranteed and depends on the quality of the original .mov video of course. But after assembling and editing your project in that avi format, it still has to be converted to mpeg-2 before it can be burned to DVD. So that would be a second conversion. Moreover, you would be going from a highly compressed format (.mov) to an uncompressed format (.avi), and then back to a more compressed format (mpeg-2). There could be considerable quality lost as a result of two conversions of this kind. Better to cut your losses and go straight from .mov > mpeg-2.

All that being said, you can make a special kind of CD or DVD which uses the DivX codec. But the problem is that you have to have a DVD player capable of recognising the DivX codec. There are an increasing number of players that will do so, but it is by no means universal.

As for the DivX watermark, it is put there by default. But if you go to the main DivX Playback Configuration panel (under the DivX Codec tab on your Windows menu, you will see down the bottom of the Toolbars tab that you only have to uncheck the box to get rid of it. Or at least you can in the Pro version which I use! It's damned annoying, and every upgrade resets it, instead of just continuing the previous settings. So I have to remember each time I upgrade to change that setting! Matter of fact, I just did so now!!

[Ron P.]

First converting to other formats will result in the various file sizes. AVI meaning the RAW uncompressed, yields huge files, around 65 gig per hour. Then is the format that we recommend editing, DV (Digital Video) which is in the avi wrapper. It also provides for large files at about 13 gig/hr.

Unless you have the purchased version of DivX, that watermark will be burnt to your video. DivX is not a free codec, so to compensate for the freebie converters, I guess they figure they're entitled to some advertisement.

There is the free, open-source version called Xvid. You can google for that, I think you can get it from sourceforge.net.

For converting your video from one format to almost any other, try SUPER. It can convert DivX, Xvid or even MPEG4 files.

It would be my recommendation to convert it to MPEG-2, if you're intentions are to burn them onto DVDs. The least amount of times you recode the video, the less your loss in quality will be. One problem is the frame sizes. They do not meet DVD specs, so will have to be enlarged, thus loss in quality. So whatever your end product is to be, try starting with that format, size, ect, to lessen your losses..

Beat me again Ken.. Oh, I just checked mine and had to uncheck it too.

[Vicki]

Thanks so much, guys.

The IMTOO encodes to mpeg1, so I will check out the SUPER converter to
convert to mpeg-2. What you were saying about that makes a lot of sense, since we will eventually be creating a DVD.

The video quality of these clips is awful to begin with, so I can only hope that his photos, which I have not seen yet, are in better shape. There's a ton of material since he spent about 4 months teaching in China, hense the video.

Thank you again for the quick response and great support,
Vicki

PS: the divx conv was a demo version.