Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with video and conversion

Borrowed camcorder uses obnoxious format. How to fix?

®@ — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:55:11 -0800

Converting ".mts" to ".avi?" I've been recording stuff for work on our office camcorder. The software that came with it is useless, it's basically Canon's "picture browsing" software that they just threw in the box (if there's a "video edit" software, it's not included or mentioned in the manual). I can pull the files off the camera via USB, but they're in MTS format. I need to edit these down into discrete clips, preferably as AVI's (Adobe Premiere). Tips? Advice? I've seen a handful of programs online that claim to be able to shift MTS to AVI, but they're in that "sketchy freeware might be adware" territory. Thoughts?

legal video conversion

roue — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:32:10 -0800

I'd like to legally automate the conversion of quicktime .mov files videos to .flv, providing a drop box service, preferably under linux, but I'm getting tripped up on the first and last parts My users are requesting a simple video ingestion/conversion service and they don't want to use YouTube in an attempt to maintain control of their content.

There are plenty of tools that will take video file format x, y, and z and convert them to H.263/Sorensen Spark/H.264 .flv files. The obvious choices are ffmpeg / mencoder / vlc project libs. Unfortunately, to accomplish the conversion they have reverse engineered U.S. patent restricted commercial codecs (please correct me if I'm wrong). Since I'll be doing this in a professional capacity, I'd like it to be completely in compliance with the law.

So I guess my question is three fold:

1. What's the cheapest way I can legally do quicktime to flv conversion?

2. If I've got a choice, what's the best codec to use for web distribution?

3. What automatable software would you recommend?

We can probably afford to spend some money, but not, for instance, the $3000 On2 wants for it's conversion tools. Also, we have Adobe CS3 Flash and Flash Video Encoder, but I was unable to find a way to script them (on Mac) to do a conversion. Last, if at all possible I'd like to avoid really hacky solutions like "this cool app that records mouse movments and lets you play them back..."

Thanks.

Cannot see .XviD avi files inside Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, am I missing a codec?

cheero — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:24:41 -0800

Cannot preview .XviD avi files inside Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, am I missing a codec? Hello all,

I'm trying to edit some video files I downloaded that are compressed with .Xvid. I basically try to load them inside Premiere Pro CS3 and its all black with no audio. Then I have to convert the file via TMPGEnc to windows media format which takes about an hour or so (for 25 mins worth of footage) and only then am I really able to see real footage. I am wondering if there is a faster way of doing this? Am I missing a codec for Premiere?

How do I share videos with friends?

Northwest — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:03:00 -0800

How do I get YouTube to computer to DVD to TV? I have actually been able to copy three youtube videos to my computer in the flv format. I want to play them to a group on TV via a DVD. iTunes will burn a DVD, how to get flv to iTunes? This needs to be easy and hopefully free. These videos are legal to copy for personal use.

How to Convert a VHS collection to digital format (and do it right the first time)?

jmprice — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:22:22 -0800

What is the best way to convert a VHS collection into digital format? As a Christmas gift to my parents, I'd like to convert our family video tapes into digital format. Toward that end, here's my general plan.

1. I would like to create a workstation with a TV tuner card connected to a VCR.
2. I would like to set up a system where I click record and then press play on the VCR so that it plays through the entire tape and records while I’m at work or sleeping. When I had the time, I would edit and splice the footage into individual events.
3. I would deliver the completed video collection in in one large hard drive.

My concerns:
- How would I set up the station to record video and then stop after a certain amount of time (six hours, the length of a tape)?
- Would a six hour clip be too large to work with in a video editing program?
- What video setting would be best for quality / file-size / future-proofing the videos? I anticipate that someday soon televisions and computer will combine and my parents will be watching the stuff from an Apple TV like device.

Please note:
- I do not want to convert to DVD. It would be a waste of my time since I want to preserve these files on hard drives in the future. (And in 15 years I would be looking to move these movies off of the DVD's because they would be decaying too.)
- I would like to spend less than $400. I have access to a lot of two-year old workstations, but I would need to buy a new TV card and large hard drives.
- There’s about 40 mostly unlabeled VHS tapes. Some of them only contain old episodes of ST:TNG and Quantum Leap, but I gotta play through them to find out.

Any advice you can give me on my project would be much appreciated.

Bringing vintage VHS material into the digital world.

phaedon — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 14:43:18 -0800

Turning VHS into digital. So I used to rent this storage space near my house. And one day, as I was moving a couple of things in, I noticed two employees emptying out the contents of somebody else's storage space and throwing everything directly into the garbage. What a waste - so I stopped them and asked if I could have a look through a few things, and to my amazement I found, box, after box, after box, full of VHS tapes, that contained recordings of things that aired on television during the mid to late '80s and early '90s. I don't know what came over me, but I took 'em all.

So now I want to go about the business of converting many of these tapes into digital format. Some of the stuff is very Youtube-y. I'm looking for an affordable and simple solution that I can incorporate with existing things in my entertainment / computer system. All suggestions welcome - this project has to be done.

Right now I have these basics:

a macbook (with separate screen)
a dvd/vcr combo with a television screen
a separate "closed circuit" monitor (stored away, if need be)

The macbook doesn't appear to have any video inputs (has firewire). Anybody have any suggestions, products or solutions that they've already explored?

Batch conversion of divx files to iso/nrg images

snatchos — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:16:21 -0800

Is there a software/scripting solution which will allow me to batch convert divx files into iso/nrg image files? I have a couple dozen divx files that need to be burned to DVD for multiple conference attendees. I started preparing the DVDs by burning the divx files as a Nero disc image to my hard drive so that when orders for the presentations come in I can just use the "burn image to disc" functionality to prepare the DVD.

However the transcoding of the divx to "DVD format" is very time consuming and can take a few hours each. I would like to be able to queue up a bunch of conversions (i.e. choose the video file, specify the image file and location for 10 different images) and let my machine prepare the images without any user interaction.

I've done a lot of searching online but haven't been able to find anything. I don't mind paying $50 - $100 to find a software that can do this. Any help would be appreciated.

Fraps is giving me craps!

cowbellemoo — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 18:05:51 -0800

How can I edit Fraps AVIs from my windows machine on my Macbook (iMovie)? Importing the file directly results in a black movie file, and I couldn't tell if I didn't have a codec or what. Trying to play it in quicktime takes me to an addon page but I have no idea which will solve the problem. Reencoding in Windows Movie Maker produces WMV files, which iMovie can't use.

Anyone know what codec to get so that iMovie can read that Fraps AVI?

(Windows XP machine, vanilla yr-old low-end Macbook, no extra video software -- I'm a noob at this)

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

Steve3 — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 17:21:27 -0800

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?

DYC into something useful?

LGCNo6 — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 23:35:18 -0800

Mission Impossible? Converting ICUII video to AVI or MPG or MOV? Got a bunch of video files of video messages from conference delegates from an online consortium earlier this month. BUT, here's the kicker: they're all saved in ICUII's DYC format. I need to convert the video files into something viewable by people who don't have ICUII. What tool can I use to do this? I've been searching and have found absolutely zilch.

Video Conversion Problem

DudeAsInCool — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 21:53:12 -0800

How can I get mini-dvd video footage on to my Mac when I don't have a mini-dvd player & the format isn't compatable on a Mac? Someone has offered me a project. They have shot several hours of video footage on mini-dvd and would like me to combine them on to one disc, add titles, etc, and then make multiple copies for the group. This is a problem as I don't have a mini dvd player, and the IMac doesnt have a mini-dvd driver. In addition, I have no idea what to charge. Any body have any ideas--hourly rate? $X per copy?

Convert to Real Media files on OS X?

chrisWhite — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 09:02:49 -0800

I have a current project I'm working on that I have to output a Quicktime file as a RealMedia (.rm) for a Real Helix Server. Apperently the format is locked and I have no input on using a different file but I'm having trouble getting the video converted to .rm on OS X. I've done quite a bit of searching but I don't seem to have any options, RealMedia seems to have locked down their format so that their files can only be written with RealProducer, which only runs on Windows/Linux. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks! I've got Quicktime Pro and FCP HD 4.5 for what it's worth

I need video on my ipod!!

keep it tight — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 10:18:47 -0800

How can I download my existing videos into my ipod? I just bought my daughter a new Ipod Video 30gb. She was able to move all her music from Windows media player over to Itunes, however, all her videos apparently need to be in .mov format...

Is there an easy way to do this? i downloaded VLC player that will apparently convert videos to .mov, but when I do that, there is picture but no sound!

Any experience out there in the hive?

Thanks

Conversion: ppt to mpg.

ハッカー — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 06:19:52 -0800

ppt -> mpg ?? I have a bunch of military briefings in PowerPoint. These are all the boring ones that nobody wants to be stuck briefing, but that still need to be done annually. My Commander has asked me if it is viable to put them all on a DVD so that we can have them in one place.

Except...

He wants the briefings to be "performed." This means he doesn't want a .ppt file, but an mpeg-2 file that can be burned to a DVD playable on a TV. The slides need to transition automatically in the movie, and have full audio recorded to accompany the video. This is essentially an effort to create a one-stop shop so that once a year we can pop in the dvd and just sit back for a few hours as the briefings do themselves.

How the hell do I do it?

DivX to .SWF conversion always converting without a sync.

cheero — Mon, 22 May 2006 21:53:11 -0800

DivX to .SWF conversion always converting without a sync. I have a video that is an .AVI (DVcodec), I converted it to DivX via VirtualDub and later on converted it from DivX to .SWF via (Flash Video Studio 1). For some unknown reason, whenever it gets converted to .SWF, the audio/video are not in sync. The main reason why I did this is because more people can see flash videos rather than DivX (at least my friends group.) I am looking for the correct way to convert this so it does not keep coming out of sync.

I've tried converting the raw file (the avi/dvcodec) one and it converts it to flash just fine, however, the file size is rather large, I am also looking for a way to compress it a little bit.

If it helps, the original avi file (DvCodec) is 270MB. When I convert it to DivX via VirtualDub, the size is knocked down to about 26 with almost no quality loss. So the third step is where I get shafted, which is the conversion to SWF which normally works, but never when I do it via DivX to .swf. Is there an alternative way? Should I convert the original file via VirtualDub to some other codec and then try to do in Flash Video Studio? Or is there another way I should do this entire procedure?

Any help is greatly welcomed. Thank you in advance!

Coverting video files for iDVD

mudhouse — Thu, 18 May 2006 12:16:04 -0800

How do I make a DVD from my iTunes video downloads? I have a bunch of .mv4 video files that I have downloaded from iTunes. I would like to use iDVD to create a collection of these files for viewing. But alas, iDVD won't work with .mv4 files. How can I convert these files to a format that will work with iDVD? Which format would be best to convert to?

simple images-to-video converter for mac/unix?

sergeant sandwich — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 13:19:55 -0800

can anyone recommend a simple piece of Mac (or unix) software that will take a bunch of image files named abc001, abc002, etc and string them together into a video file that i can view with a lowest-common-denominator video player? i have some code that spits out a bunch of images - currently into the simple PPM format that's part of netpbm package. the images have filenames with sequential numbers in them, and i want software that will just string them together in order into one of the more common (mpeg, avi, quicktime, or whatever) video formats.

i was planning to use ppmtompeg that comes with netpbm but i'm having a hard time getting the netpbm package to compile on my powerbook. while i try to sort that out, i'm wondering if there's any other software available to do what i want?

i see from this thread that apparently quicktime will do this, but i suspect i need the quicktime pro that you have to pay for, as opposed to the free quicktime player.

so, my only absolute requirement be that the software is free. it would be nice if it supported the PPM format (if not, i can batch-convert my images in graphic converter) and extra nice if i could run it from the command line like ppmtompeg so that i can incorporate the conversion into a shell script.

any ideas? thanks in advance!

Why can't they make iMovie for Windows?

thecjm — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 07:29:28 -0800

I need to edit some video files I've shot on my camera. The problem is that the camera's video files export as .MOV and I can't find a good entry-level Windows program that supports the file type. Could someone recommend either a program that will let me edit this file type, or a good freeware converter? And if I do change them over to .AVI, what are some recommendations for a good yet simple Windows video editor?

Looking for simple video format conversion

Aaorn — Sat, 29 May 2004 16:33:10 -0800

Why is it so damn complicated to convert between video formats? This afternoon I went on vcdhelp.com to find out how to convert AVI to SVCD and the simplest tutorial involved six different tools and unbelievably many settings. How come nobody has written something to do it in one step? Can it really not be automated?

VHS -> DVD

jdroth — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 11:29:23 -0800

I have some old video tapes that I'd love to convert to digital video, storing the data on DVDs and/or my g5. Is there a good way to do this? Is it possible to transfer commercial video tapes in addition to personal tapes? I'm a video novice, but catch on quickly.

Convert mpegs to iMovie files?

magnetbox — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 06:57:24 -0800

Video amongst both a PC and Mac: I would like to edit home (i?)movies in iMovie on my iBook. The original movies are on VHS tapes. I have a TV tuner card on my PC which I have used to record things from a VCR, which it saves as MPEG files. If I go this route, how do I convert them into something that iMovie can use? Is there a better route to go altogether? For example, are there (preferably free) programs for either platform that can convert things? I had heard QuickTime movies are split audio/video whereas MPEG files are mashed together so I may have to save each part separately first?

Also, once I edit my movie, how do I get them onto a DVD, for example? I have iDVD but no DVD recorder on the iBook. I do have a external stereo-component-style DVD recorder (but I have heard you can't burn with iDVD on anything except a SuperDrive). I am also not adverse to buying an external DVD burner for the computer, but I am unaware what is available for the Mac that would work in this situation.