Converting avi to mov

[titaniumjones]

Hello folks,
Let me start by saying I am a newby and don't really know what I am talking about. However, I'm hoping what I say makes sense and is correct.
I have some DVDs that I did have on my computer. When I first found ffmpegX I converted them to .avi (I think they are MPEG 4 inside an avi wrapper...? Does this make sense?) Now I would like to use them with iDVD and create a front end to them. To do this I need to convert them to .mov files. My goal is to do this and keep the mpeg 4 content.
A few weeks ago I managed to covert one of these and everthing worked fine. I used version p of ffmpegX. I then went on to try to convert the others this was where I had a problem. The finished mov would not play like the first one and I have been unable to convert them since. I have now upgraded to version q and the problem persists.
Now being a logical person I started to do some investigation. During encoding, if you preview it the result is that the window opens but the content is garbage with no sound. If you stop the process during conversion the resultant movie works. However if you let the conversion go full term it still doesn't work.
My next experiment is to try to convert the origional movie that did work and see if it will work again.

Any ideas would be usefull

[alph]

There are many variables, but most AVI files will open and play fine in the Quicktime Player provided you have either the 3ivx and or Divx plug-in/s installed. Once you can open and play the AVI files in this way all you need to do is "Save As" self-contained and you end up with a MOV container. No transcoding occurs. Doing the reverse is a problem so bare that in mind.

Hope this helps.
Cheers

www.3ivx.com
www.divx.com

[titaniumjones]

Thanks for the info. By installing both 3ivx and divx i was able to determine that the source .avi files were corupt. I am now trying to extract the video and audio tracks seperatily to recover the video. Any ideas?

[alph]

I'm not sure what you mean by corrupt, but if it's only the index then you could possibly fix them with the Fix command under the "Tools" tab in ffmpegx. If that does not work then I've had some success, in cases where ffmpegx has failed to fix, with DivFix 1.10 under Windows. It's free.

If the actual video or audio streams are corrupt then what ever will play them without crashing is your best choice.

Regards