Comments on: Why won't my Canon let me upload my .avi movie?

Question: Why won't my Canon let me upload my .avi movie?

arielmeadow — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:26:06 -0800

I recently shot an 8min .avi video with my Canon point 'n' shoot (SD800 IS). Now, I'm unable to upload the file onto ANY of my computers (pc, macbook, ibook). Is the 1gig .avi file just too big?

I get an different error on each machine, with the PC saying there's not enough room to import the file (despite hundreds of gigs of room), the Macbook saying the import failed, and the ibook simply stalling out.

I can play the video on the camera, so I know it's ok. I can import other photos and video from the camera, so I know that the USB connection is ok. So why can't any of my computers deal with this file?

By: jmd82

jmd82 — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:55:07 -0800

Similar question here with a few program suggestions.

By: unSane

unSane — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:00:58 -0800

.avi is a funny format that can be hard to deal with.

On the Mac, you can download Flip4Mac and try that. (Instal it then double click the file. It should launch in Quicktime but may take quite a while to load as QT Player needs to read in the whole file to play it.

If that doesn't work, try Perian. I found it did not work too well with .avi files however.

FFMpegX has generally worked well for me... you can translate .avi files to pretty much any format you like.

Most recently I have been using VisualHub for all my video conversion needs, including .avi. It works brilliantly, but I think it just leverages the ffmpeg library, like FFmpegx.

(By the way, if you install Perian and it doesn't work, uninstall it in the pref pane before trying any of the other solutions or they may not work).

Remember to quit and restart QuickTime Player after installing any new QT components or it won't pick them up.

One of these solutions should work. If not, mail me at the address in my profile and I'll try to help you out.

By: unSane

unSane — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:02:45 -0800

BTW, 1Gb is not too big. I have successfully converted > 1Gb.avi files on the mac. You may run into a limit on some flavors of Windows however.

By: lia

lia — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 21:27:29 -0800

are you trying to transfer the file directly from your camera? if you are, try using a card reader to import instead.