wmv3 to mov h264

[JustSomeGuy]

Hi.. I just got this nice HD avi file and want to play it on my mac...
I can sorta play it on the mac with the latest version VLC but my PowerBook G4 just isn't fast enought to decompress the video real time... So I thought to my self... Maybe I could convert it to mov and then maybe I might be able to play it.
So in Quick Time Pro I can save things to mov but unfortunantly I can't open this avi file in Quicktime...
The point here is that I want to preserve image quality as much as possible...
The avi file is 1280x736 2243 kb/sec (according to gspot), with a dolby soundtrack.

Suggestions please?

[Ai Haibara]

If you don't mind converting it on the Windows end, you can always try one of the converters available in the Tools section to the left. If you want to convert it on the Mac, you can try ffmpegx (note that there's a dedicated ffmpegx forum here on VH, which major (the author) frequents ). I don't remember any other app for the Mac that'll convert AVI to MOV, offhand. (Except for the command-line ffmpeg and mencoder, which ffmpegx uses, anyway.)

Actually, VLC can convert videos to other formats as well. If you can at least load the video, it might be able to convert it even if you can't play the original properly on your setup. Once you have the video loaded, select Wizard from the File menu, or hit Ctrl-W to bring up the "Streaming/Transcoding Wizard." Pick "Transcode/Save to File," and click Next. This should bring up the options you'll need to start converting the file.