Newby Need Free Program to Convert AVI to...?

[janegael]

I have a large avi file (2.5GB) of some family moments thta my DVD won't play because it doesn't PLAY AVI. I'm looking for a free program because I will probably only use it this once, to convert the file. I also am not sure what to convert it to so I can put it on a DVD and play it.

My Panasonic Blu-Ray will play video, MPG , AVCHD, MKV, MPO, FLAC

To be honest I don't even know what most of those are. I'm in awe of those of you who do know. This is pretty much just a one shot for me so any noob help available would be gratefully accepted.

[netmask56]

MKVMergeGui will take the avi and wrap it in a MKV container that hopefully your Panasonic will play. It's free

[hello_hello]

Most Bluray players will play AVI. If not, try this first. Download MKVToolNix and run MKVMergeGUI. Go into it's options (File/Options) and look for the one which says "disable header removal compression for audio and video tracks by default". Make sure it's checked. Close options and use the "Add" button to open your AVI. Click on "Start Muxing" down the bottom. You're not converting anything so as fast as you drive can read and write it'll remux your AVI as an MKV. See how that goes.

Just because you player supports MKV doesn't mean it'll play all the audio/video types an MKV container can hold, but try the above first. If that doesn't work you'll probably need to convert the video to a type the player likes. The manual should tell you. AnyVideoConverter should convert it for you. There's a free version. Beware of the toolbar it will ask to install when you install AVC. You can tell it not to.

[Kerry56]

If re-wrapping to an mkv file doesn't work, you can always convert to dvd-video. AVStoDVD is very good for this, and not hard to use.

Since you are in the US, set the program to make NTSC compliant dvds. You'll see that option when installing the program.