Convert HD .MOV file to anything else with minimal quality loss

[Rapid99]

Hi.
I recently purchased a HD helmet camera to record my skirmishes and games with my team (i'm the team's Tactical Medic and videographer). The quality is excellent, especially for a helme camera. But my problem is, the files record in .MOV format.

I edit my movies with Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas, and occasionally Windows Movie Maker, depending on the requirements of the movie. The problem is, none of the programs support .MOV files, so they need to be converted. WMM doesnt detect them at all, Vegas imports them without audio and the first 10 seconds of video suspiciously missing, and premiere inports them with the colors all out of wack.

Anyway, what is the best format to convert them to to cause minimal quality loss? The videos record in 1280x720 HD. When I gave converting them to AVI a try (converting to AVI with both DivX and MPEG-4 codecs) the quality was so butchered it makes the money I spent on this camera almost a total waste. If it matters, I converted them with a program called "Convert MOV to AVI"

Specs on the video being converted:
1280x720 HD
29.8 FPS
.MOV file

Thank you.

[Baldrick]

Try another converter like mpeg streamclip, mp4camtoavi or avidemux. Try use a lossless codec or use h264 or xvid with HIGH video bitrate and you wont lose that much quality.

[Rapid99]

Alright i'll give ita shot, thanks.

[mudjack3r]

I use ffmpeg to convert to DNxHD .MOV, then edit in Sony Vegas. Need to install Quicktime and DNxHD codec for Vegas to support the converted .mov