.mov to .avi with sound

[siobhan]

I'm trying to convert some Quicktime .mov files into smaller .avi files.

Background: the files are originally .wmv files:
Windows Media Audio 9 Standard, Mono, 22.050 kHz
Windows Media Video 9 Standard, 640 x 480, Millions

Thanks to owning QT Pro and Flip4Mac WMV I can export those files to .mov files:
16-bit Integer (Little Endian), Stereo (L R), 44.100 kHz
H.264 Decoder, 831 x 623, Millions

Now, these files, I want to convert to .avi using ffmpex.

(The reason I'm not using QT Pro to convert the .wmv files straight to .avi files, is that the QT converter seems absolutely useless - the resulting videos look pixellated as hell and are huge. Also, I can't seem to get ffmpex to convert directly from .wmv to .avi - I assume that's because ffmpex doesn't recognise Flip4Mac. Thus, the roundabout way.)

Anyway - now I'm trying to use ffmpex to convert my .mov files into .avi files. This works reasonable well (after changing the width to something divisible by 16), but there is no sound. The .mov files play with sound in QT, but ffmpex's preview has no sound already.

I've tried a workaround: add the sound via a separate mp3 file. That worked once, but not anymore. And besides, it's a big pain.

So, any ideas? Pointers? Obvious things I've overlooked?

ETA:
I've also tried conversion with "Decode with QT" checked (in the Options tab). No joy either.

[Nikki]

a quick way is to open the .wmv files in VLC and stream them (video MPEG-2/audio MPEG) into a .ts file (=transport stream. This is easily recognized by MPEG streamclip that allows for all kinds of encodings and corrections.

Nikki

[siobhan]

For some reason VLC refuses to open the .wmv files. Says:

ffmpeg: cannot open codec (Windows Media Video 3)
main: no suitable decoder module for fourcc `WMV3'.
VLC probably does not support this sound or video format.


Help?