what to convert to

[philebus]

Hi,

This is really a general question about conversion. I have xilisoft video converter ultra. It is easy to use, but I have a very general question. It arises in the context of wanting to convert a MOV file to a different format but can equally apply to other files as well.

To begin: I have a MOV file that I would like to convert to either WMV, divX or mpeg 1. Why, because I would like to edit it, and don't want to use quicktime (a program I dislike immesely) and have other programs that can easily edit these other formats losslessly (ie solveig for WMV and avi; womble for mpeg). My question is what to convert it to in order to get best results in terms of not losing any more quality than is already lost in compressing the original file to MOV in the first place. I have experimented and converted the file to mpeg 1 an divX. To my eye the results seem about equal. In both cases the quality seems about the same (by converting at the high quality settings) to the original file. Is my eye seeing things correctly?

In other words what are the appropriate parameters to convert MOV files to another file format without losing further quality?

In general my question could be what is the rule of thumb in converting from one format to another (using programs like xilisoft) so as to minimize loss of video quality?

hopefully this question makes sense,

thanks

[guns1inger]

Use the latest virtualdub and the MOV plugin, and you can edit in virtualdub and output as Divx. Only one re-encode needed. However if you are happy with Xilisoft then quality obviously isn't the highest thing on your list.

Any time you use a lossy compression, you lose quality. Minimise by editing without re-encoding, or by using a lossless intermediate format. Lagarith or Huffyuv are well regarded for this purpose.

[philebus]

Thanks guns1, but I would like to stick with xilisoft for the time being, realising that virtual dub is better.

So my question general qu remain; namely when using xilisoft-type conversion programs what would be the best thing to convert MOV files to out of divx, mpeg 1 or wmv? Or is it much of a muchness?

[guns1inger]

All are lossy, all will reduce quality. Keep the bitrate high, and live with bigger files, and you may not notice the damage

[philebus]

OK, that is what I thought.

I certainly realise they are all lossy, but if I have MOV to begin with there is not much I can do other convert it to a format I prefer.

[guns1inger]

Or learn to use a more flexible editor

[jagabo]

Convert to uncompressed or losslessly compressed (HuffYUV, Lagarith) AVI. The files will be very large but you will lose not quality. Those are easily edited.

After editing compress to whatever format you want. If you use a lossy compression codec you will lose quality at this point.