How do I deal with Indeo Video 5 on OS X?

January 5, 2007 5:21 PM

I have a set of 45 short videos that I need to batch convert to anything that plays nicely with Quicktime on OS X, which is almost anything but the .avi with Indeo Video 5 they're in now. I tried QT Pro, ffmpeg and VisualHub before reading that Indeo and OS X just don't work together. I have a MacBook with WinXP under Parallels to work with, but I don't know video conversion on Windows at all. It seems like VirtualDub would help, but I can't figure out the batch conversions. My attempts yield me responses like "the function SetMode was called on a stream [?] that hasn't been previously initalized with SetSource". Say what?
posted by Steve3 to computers & internet (11 comments total)

According to this page you should be able to view Indeo Video 5 compressed files in Quicktime under WinXP with the proper codecs. If you can, you should be able to use Quicktime Pro's export functionality to save them out to MOVs. It won't be fun doing it by hand but it should work.

For that matter, why not just install the Windows version of FFMpeg if you're familiar with that software?
posted by nathancaswell at 5:50 PM on January 5, 2007

Or boot into classic if you can and do it in Quicktime Pro there.
posted by nathancaswell at 5:53 PM on January 5, 2007

I'm familiar with ffmpegX- the Win version I found isn't quite as friendly.

Booting into classic isn't an option- I have an Intel Mac.

I dug around a bit more, and VirtualDub is batch processing them, based on a job file built by VDubBatcher. With Cinepack output, the exported files play in OS X.
posted by Steve3 at 7:09 PM on January 5, 2007

Have you tried Mediacoder? I've found it pretty good in the "convert anything to anything" stakes, and now that it has "wizards" for common conversions, it's easy to use.

Otherwise, to automate things in VirtualDub, use the "Job Control" option in the file menu, and get it to add a whole folder.
posted by Jimbob at 7:43 PM on January 5, 2007 [1 favorite]

Use iSquint. It is free but they accept donations. It will do the job for .avi files with no problem... http://isquint.com/. I use it on my Mac all the time. It is drag and drop, hit start and you are done.
posted by bkeene12 at 9:03 PM on January 5, 2007

bkeene12: "Use iSquint. It is free but they accept donations. It will do the job for .avi files with no problem... "

Uh...did you actually try this before making the suggestion to use iSquint? If VisualHub didn't work for Steve, iSquint certainly isn't gonna work for him either, considering the fact that iSquint is just a dumbed down version of VisualHub.

I am having similar problems with IV5 on my MBP, and so far the only workaround I've been able to figure out is to run Parallels, as Steve mentioned. It's a big pain in the ass, though, since Parallels does not recognize Firewire drives, so I have to copy all my IV5 (and even worse, that horrible, but ubiquitous-in-the-late-90s, I263 codec) videos to my internal drive first.
posted by melorama at 9:47 PM on January 5, 2007

Super is GPL, runs on Windows and is supposed to convert video from any format to any format with a nice GUI.
posted by flabdablet at 6:07 AM on January 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

Right, iSquint, VLC, or anything OS X won't handle IV5 input. I'm sure this is one place MacOS is not the right tool for the job.

I went to the Super link, found my way to 4 download options, and none of them get me a file, using either firefox or IE.
posted by Steve3 at 6:54 AM on January 6, 2007

Hope their product is better than its truly dreadful website.

Here's an alternative download source, which should be OK despite all the FUD on the Erightsoft site.
posted by flabdablet at 9:05 AM on January 6, 2007

If the resolution is not too limiting, there's also the free ipod video converter.
posted by jbelkin at 10:04 AM on January 6, 2007

burp, sorry about that. One should not drink and answer questions... my bad.
posted by bkeene12 at 8:16 PM on January 7, 2007