Fraps to iMovie totally impossible !!

[kinkladze10]

I recently bought a macbook pro and I noticed it has iMovie, I'm trying to use it to make a movie of some incame footage I took with fraps.

Here's the problem though and it is making me tear my hair out.

Fraps records in AVI but iMovie won't take AVI.

the footage is on pc, but I need to convert it to mac format.
I also don't want to lose too much quality.

I've tried every conversion method possible but it just isn't working and I so frustrated, I dont want to use Windows Movie Maker as its pretty poor but I cant get to a state to use Imovie.

My fraps file is massive around 4gigs.

I've tried Mpegstreamclip both on the mac and on the pc but that just exits when I try and load a clip.
I've tried Virtualdub but that just loses so much quality.

I've tried DivX author that doesn't work either massive amount of quality lose

I just need someway to get imovie to take my .avi somehow.

Can anyone help please?

[guns1inger]

Virtualdub can do it with minimal if any quality loss, depending on how you use it.

You might also try Xvid4PSP, which can convert your file to either a high quality MP4, or even an MOV file.

[kinkladze10]

Well here is what I did in Virtualdub

Imported my file, went to video, went to compression selected the mpeg4 codec and saved it as an avi file.

I cant see any options of how to save it an imovie compatable file and even though I saved it as mpeg4 and lost alot of quality imovie still wont let me import it.

so I just don't get it, is there a guide I can use on how to use Virtualdub to do what I want?

Thanks

[guns1inger]

mpeg4 is not mp4. MP4 is a container, mpeg-4 is a compression method. Mpeg-4 covers Xvid, Divx, WMV and H.264. However virtualdub really only likes writing to an avi container, so regardless how you compress it, iMovie still won't like it. Use a different tool.

I still think Xvid4PSP is your simplest option, but if you like to play, try AVI Demux. It can also output H.264 in an MP4 container.

As for quality - you control this by how you set up the compression. Use too small a bitrate to too low a quantizer value and you will get low quality.

[kinkladze10]

ok right thanks for this, I'll ditch Virtualdub in that case.

Just downloaded Xvid4PSP so I'll give that a whirl.

I'm quite new to this so what format does it need to be in for it to go into imovie and at the end of all this I'll need to post the vid on the web for download so Im hoping it will be compatable after with WMP etc