AVI to MOV

[AgentOrange]

Hi all, can anyone point me in the direction of a good, free program that'll convert an .avi file to a .mov file. I'm after something that'll do it easily and not require six different progs or plug-ins.

[fryke]

Well... It all depends on what ".avi" in your case means. If it's simply a Windows Media file, then Flip4Mac (get it from www.microsoft.com/mac somewhere) should do the trick. You open the .avi in QuickTime and save as/export to a .mov file. If this is about DivX/XviD files, then you get the official DivX plugin, for example, and again simply open the file in QuickTime and save as/export to .mov.

Transcoding, however, will quite probably _always_ lose some quality.

[AgentOrange]

Thanks Fryke. What I have are a load of avi files that I want to pop into iTunes but it's only accepting my mov files.

[fryke]

Ah. If it's only for iTunes (and not for the iPod), then you can do it like this: Install the codecs necessary for Quicktime to understand the .avis. I guess it's DivX/XviD (so www.divx.com should do it) or WMV (then Flip4Mac should do it). Then open the .avi files in QT and save them as .mov files that point to the original .avi file. You'll end up with both an .avi and a .mov file (you'll need *both*, the .mov files are merely links to the .avi files, kinda). You can then add the .mov file to iTunes, and it'll play the .avi inside the .mov inside iTunes. Like that you don't need to really transcode the movies and quality stays the same.

Of course this is rather a workaround than a clean solution. (I don't get why iTunes can't simply accept the files Quicktime can accept...)

[Natobasso]

Possibility here:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/28250

Quicktime Pro might be a good option as well:
http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=Quicktime_Pro