The QuickTime MOV format is the video output format for many digital still cameras. MOV is also becoming very popular as the distribution format for video bloggers; primarily because many video bloggers are also Mac users. If you want to edit your MOV files in Windows Movie Maker or playback video blogs on one of the many portable video players from companies like Creative and Archos, it becomes necessary to convert those files to a compatible format. In most cases, converting to AVI is the quickest intermediate step for converting MOV to something portable to applications and portable devices.

Tools to convert MOV to AVI

RAD Video Tools This app relies on QuickTime for all video conversions, requiring you to have QuickTime player installed on your system.

To convert a MOV (or any other video) using RAD Video Tools, first locate the video you want to convert.

You can find out information about the video file using the File Info, including frame rate, resolution, number of frames, data rate, color depth and a handful of features that won't assist in the conversion process.

When you're ready to convert the file, click the Convert a file button. If you accept the defaults, RAD Video Tools converts your video as an uncompressed AVI file with the same name(.avi), resolution and frame rate as your original MOV. To convert several MOV files as a batch, simply set the configuration options for each file and select batch instead of convert.

Clicking the Convert button brings up the option to select one of the AVI codecs available on your system. Full Frames (Uncompressed) is the default, which is the best option to select for wide compatibility. Keep in mind the uncompressed file size will be approximately 100 times larger than the MOV file.

Depending on the quality of the original MOV file, your mileage may vary in the conversion process. You can decrease the file size and improve the final AVI file output by adjusting some of the settings.

RAD Video Tools recommends setting contrast to 8 to help turn almost black pixels to black. You can further insure a truer black color by setting Black clamp in the 20-25 range.

Smooth % can help eliminate blocky pixels by blurring adjoining pixels together. Occasionally this works to your advantage, but a little bit goes a long way. You can help the conversion of a poorly compressed MOV in some cases, but often, smoothing the video makes it worse.

In most cases, stick with the defaults and you'll end up with a video approximately as good as the original MOV

Quicktime Pro costs only $29.99, so even though it's not freeware it isn't a budget buster, either.

Here's a link that explains how to do the conversion under QuickTime Pro. Looks like it might be a little hairy:

MOV to AVI MPEG WMV Converter is a tool to help you convert,split,and join MOV to AVI, MPEG, WMV. Use it you can convert QuickTime(.MOV, .QT) file to AVI(Divx,XviD,MPEG4), MPEG1, MPEG2, VCD, SVCD, DVD, WMV/ASF file. It also enable you to joint some small QuickTime files to one in various format, and you can split a large QuickTime file to some small pieces of films. MOV to AVI MPEG WMV Converter has a multi-tasks system,which enable you do different tasks(convert, joint, split) at one time after performing a single click. You can change the framerate, size etc as you like. The program does not require any technical experience and is very easy to use.

Digital Media Converter speedily converts your video and audio files from one format to another.

This simple to use program supports all popular media formats like MPEG, AVI, DivX, WMV, WMA, MP3, WAV etc.

The program's mass conversion capability lets you multi-select files to add them for conversion. You can also add an entire folder. Digital Media Converter lets you search for files by extension in a folder and then adds them for conversion.

It also gives you complete control over the files that you want to convert. Digital Media Converter uses technology and can convert faster than other conventional products. The software provides default settings and auto-select features that gives you high quality and low size video conversions.

More software to try:

MP4Cam2AVI

Alive Video Converter

ConvertMovie

Last update: 10:31 PM Thursday, October 20, 2005