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  1. ...C O P Y L E F T JohnnyBob's Avatar
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    The family genealogist sent us a link to a video which he shot during his last visit. I downloaded it as a 701 MB file named MVI_8149.MOV. I have no prior experience with .MOV files but discovered that Apple Quick Time is required to play them. Fortunately one of our computers has it installed and played the video OK. I was greatly surprised to discover that it was only 4 minutes 52 seconds long. For 701 MB I was expecting an hour long video, at least, based on playing a few .avi files in the past. I wondered if something was wrong, but apparently not. It seems that .MOV is a terribly inefficient format for videos, so I decided to try to convert it to something of reasonable size and went looking for video converters. My prior experience with video conversion has always failed. Obviously I don't know enough. Nevertheless I found a converter which claimed to be simple and easy to use to convert .MOV to .avi format. It's named "Rad Video Tools". Here are the relevant links and a brief description:
    https://www.videohelp.com/tools/Rad-Video-Tools
    http://www.radgametools.com/binkfaq.htm
    Rad Video Tools is a Bink(bik) and a Smacker(smk) video encoder. Bink Video - The Video Codec for Games. It can also convert your video to an exe file with builtin player and convert Quicktime MOV to AVI / DivX.


    So I downloaded and installed it, and it seemed to have a low learning curve. I was able to get a conversion going fairly soon. Here is the info which it provided about my 701 MB original .MOV file. [my notes are in brackets]

    RAD File Info...
    Width: 1280
    Height: 720
    Frames: 7004
    Color depth: 32
    Alpha plane: No
    Milliseconds per frame: 41.71
    Total time: 4 minutes 52 seconds
    Total size: 734,904,912 [701 MB on hard drive with Windows Explorer]
    Average data rate: 2,515,719
    Average frame size: 104,926
    Last modified on 7/1/2012 at 3:16 pm
    Attributes: archive-yes read only-no hidden-no system-no
    OK

    So I ran the conversion using the defaults which took only about 16 minutes, and was surprised to discover that the resulting .avi file was 4 GB in size. Hey, folks, that's going on the wrong direction! The idea is to get a smaller file (not a bigger one) and one which has a more portable and easily played format such as .avi.

    So for my second try, I changed the output .avi file resolution to 640x360, half of the original 1280x720, and expected to get a smaller result. But not so, the resulting .avi file was still 4 GB. Here's the feedback info it provided about the conversion:

    Bink Converter - Done!
    Conversion Info:
    Input file: MVI_8149.MOV
    Output file: MVI_8149.avi
    Video info: 1280x720 [or 640x360], 23.97 frames per second
    Audio info: 48000 hz, 16 bit, stereo
    Frame: 7,004 total frames converted
    Total time: 19 minutes, 13 seconds
    File size: Final: 4,897,252,800 bytes [which appears as 4,194,304 KB on disc with Windows Explorer, i.e. 4GB]

    So I'm at a loss what to do or where to go from here. I'm inclined to throw in the towel on this conversion as I've always done with conversions in the past. They never work for me. But here it is folks, if you care to take this inept soul by the hand and lead me to the nearest water...
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  2. Member bat999's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by JohnnyBob View Post
    So I'm at a loss what to do or where to go from here..
    Try again with a different converter program.
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  3. ...C O P Y L E F T JohnnyBob's Avatar
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    Nope. I need leading by the hand...
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  4. Member
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    He is leading you by the hand ... as much spoon feeding as you're going to get anyway.

    That program is crap. Go to the tools section. I suspect Handbrake or vidcoder (which uses the handbrake engine) would do nicely. Vidcoder is easier for newbies.
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  5. Member hech54's Avatar
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    RAD and BINK are CRAP.
    You need a real video converter like WinFF or HandBrake.
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  6. ...C O P Y L E F T JohnnyBob's Avatar
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    Well, that's something, but not much. Don't anybody here like holding hands? :0)

    For example, is .avi a good format to convert to?
    Isn't 701 MB a terribly large file for only a 5 minute video?
    What size of file might I reasonably expect for a 5 minute video?
    Etc.

    Offhand based on movies which get 90+ minutes on a 4.5G disc, a 5 minute video shouldn't be much bigger than about 250 MB. And the .avi's I've seen converted from MPEG were only a fraction of that. So I would expect maybe 100 MB. Is that a fair guestimate?

    Well, anyway, maybe I'll try one of those other video converters if I get inspired again, but not yet. I know from experience that nothing works.
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  7. aBigMeanie aedipuss's Avatar
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    download mediainfo. it's free. use it on the 700MB mov file. something is not right with it. the 5 min video at a data rate of 2.5 mbs should only be about 200MB.

    in order for a converter to work you may have to use it on a computer with quicktime installed, as it needs the codec to be able to read the .mov
    --
    "a lot of people are better dead" - prisoner KSC2-303
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  8. Mrs Intel Core i7's Avatar
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    online videoconverters such as http://www.online-convert.com/ ^^^
    is best choice for video converting. upload files download conversion
    for sendin`in
    emails, as link.also register to vh newsletter
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  9. ...C O P Y L E F T JohnnyBob's Avatar
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    Thanks. I might consider it for a small file, but this one is 701 MB. Not very practical with my slow connection.

    P.S. I took a look anyway and see that their limit is 100 MB. Also they make no mention of .MOV files that I could find.
    Last edited by JohnnyBob; 5th Jul 2012 at 18:48.
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