A general procedure for "preparing" my MOV clips

[sybariten]

OK this has nothing to do with feature film rips or such so i hope its ok anyway!

Here's the deal, i get quicktime .MOV clips off a digital camera now and then. I am planning to use these clips in short video films, despite their technical shortcomings. I figure the most probable format i will be working in is normal TV PAL, and the MOV clips are just 320 wide or something. Plus, they are 15 fps.

Now, the more i think about Premiere, i realize i wont need to prepare these clips much at all, but let me at least present what i originally wanted: I figured i wanted some easy standard method that i could always use to convert these clips
* from the horrible MOV into something more useful
* from the small size interpolated up to my aimed size
* from my low fps up to my interpoladed 25 fps

The coolest thing would be if i had small and simple commandline tools to do this, much as i'd solve a lot of stuff under unix. However, i've had problems just doing the first MOV conversion.
There are a´couple of QT converters that are commandline and that people talk about in different places on the net, i've tried those and the result was just a black screen in both cases. I figure my MOV files may not be standard quicktime files. When analyzing in GSpot (AFTER using any of those two commandline tools), i read something about "JPEG DIB" . Could this be some twist of MJPEG?

Any ideas on where i should start? Is there any software that can do these conversions with a quick wrapper script or so, without the need of going through three GUIs ?

I figure , in a way now, that this is maybe not the right way to go after all, coz i guess i dont wanna convert from QT compressed to some other compressed format such as mpeg, and THEN go into premiere and thus lose a generation.... but for previews it would be very practical.

If anyone understood what i asked about, any tips is appreciated.

cheers

[underwurlde]

Hi,

Sounds boring but I would convert away from MOV to start with - if they are short clips, should only take minutes to convert.

Once converted they should be alot more 'flexible' etc.

I am sure I have posted a method of converting those god awful MOV files - a quick search of the forum should dig it out.

Andy

[sybariten]

OK .... well not as sweet as a do-it-all solution but i guess you could be right. But do you know any (foolproof) method of analyzing what format my clips really are in? I've read "JPEG DIB" somewhere but that tells me nothing.

[underwurlde]

Hello again,

I have found a single step solution over the weekend whilst trying to convert a damn awkward MOV file to MPEG so that I could eventually convert it to DivX (OK, 2 steps if you want to go to DivX).

Note: I am pretty bloody sure there is a method of converting anything to anything in a single step using GraphEdit but after many hours of trying I could not suss it - I am not a expert with this proggie but it was fun trying!

The ONLY program that successfully converted (both audio & video) to a more useable format (MPEG2) was MainConcept MPEG Encoder - it made a damn near as possible perfect copy (and I was well pleased with the final DivX version encoded from the MPEG step).

Note: I actually wanted to split the movie size in half (2CDs) and had to extract the audio into WAV in order to preserve audio sync (and then finally including it back into the DivX movie as an MP3 as a final step before splitting it).

Note: DrDivX was almost successful in a one step convertion from MOV to DivX but for some reason it got the orignal MOV frame size wrong & I ended up with a horizonally chopped in half movie!

To initially analyise the original MOV file I used QuickTime Pro: Movie Menu -> Get Movie Properties...

Hope this helps,


Andy

[miksu]

Hi,

Sounds boring but I would convert away from MOV to start with - if they are short clips, should only take minutes to convert.

Once converted they should be alot more 'flexible' etc.

I am sure I have posted a method of converting those god awful MOV files - a quick search of the forum should dig it out.

Andy

There is nothing wrong with MOV, since it's just wrapper like AVI. One could say as well I would try to stay far away from AVI.

It's the codecs used that matters, not wrapper-file. Most important codecs exist for both MOV and AVI. Like DIVX. And unfortunately, there are terrible ones for both.

[underwurlde]

miksu,

I am well aware that MOV is a container & I completely agree with what you are saying, but would you agree that basically, the AVI container is alot easier to use. I do not know why this is the case but I think (and I may be wrong) that MOV is ported from MAC and AVI is the defacto for PC? Hence as soon as I get a MOV file it gets converted....

Regards,

Andy

[sybariten]

Underwurlde: thanks for your help! will try it when i have the opportunity.

As for miksus latest comment... i too know that AVI isnt a movie format in istself, only a container. Didnt know this was the case with mov though. However, i've never really understood the exact idea with a container format. Perhaps someone could explain? Although OT.
Also, i would say that although theoretically AVI is a container format, in practice you could argue that an avi file probably will be a divx file, or today, it could also be an xvid file.
If you increase this idea to .mov, what format would all those .mov files really be?

(i must say that i have never seen feature films ripped as mov files)

peace[/b]

[KBeee]

OK this has nothing to do with feature film rips or such so i hope its ok anyway!

Here's the deal, i get quicktime .MOV clips off a digital camera now and then. I am planning to use these clips in short video films, despite their technical shortcomings. I figure the most probable format i will be working in is normal TV PAL, and the MOV clips are just 320 wide or something. Plus, they are 15 fps.

Now, the more i think about Premiere, i realize i wont need to prepare these clips much at all, but let me at least present what i originally wanted: I figured i wanted some easy standard method that i could always use to convert these clips
* from the horrible MOV into something more useful
* from the small size interpolated up to my aimed size
* from my low fps up to my interpoladed 25 fps

The coolest thing would be if i had small and simple commandline tools to do this, much as i'd solve a lot of stuff under unix. However, i've had problems just doing the first MOV conversion.
There are a´couple of QT converters that are commandline and that people talk about in different places on the net, i've tried those and the result was just a black screen in both cases. I figure my MOV files may not be standard quicktime files. When analyzing in GSpot (AFTER using any of those two commandline tools), i read something about "JPEG DIB" . Could this be some twist of MJPEG?

Any ideas on where i should start? Is there any software that can do these conversions with a quick wrapper script or so, without the need of going through three GUIs ?

I figure , in a way now, that this is maybe not the right way to go after all, coz i guess i dont wanna convert from QT compressed to some other compressed format such as mpeg, and THEN go into premiere and thus lose a generation.... but for previews it would be very practical.

If anyone understood what i asked about, any tips is appreciated.

cheers

You can use EO Video to convert mov clips to AVI. You can specify whatever resolution you want, whatever aspect ratio you want, with whatever AVI codec you want. Understand though, that the output will be of at best equal quality, and probably, lower quality than the original, but with care the output will be very satisfying.