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Convert mov files
Convert those .mov files that your digital camera makes PDF Print E-mail
Written by machiner   
Wednesday, 14 February 2007 02:42

I have a digital camera that creates .mov files for videos. It's terrific but I cannot watch the videos (.MOV) that I capture with the camera on our living-room DVD player. However, like many recent DVD players, it will play .avi files. So I use this handy command that I ripped off in its entirety, some time ago. It will make separate .mp3 and avi files for your enjoyment:

$ for fl in YOURMOVFILE.MOV
 do
   mencoder ${fl} -o ${fl/mov/avi} -oac mp3lame -ovc lavc
   mplayer -ao pcm -vo null -vc dummy -dumpaudio -dumpfile ${fl/mov/mp3} ${fl/mov/avi}
   #rm ${fl/mov/avi}
 done

Output

Of course, you need mplayer and mencoder installed.

ffmpeg is perfectly up to this task as well, although I think mencoder is a little faster. The syntax that I have been using (specifying a 60FPS frame rate) is the following:

$ ffmpeg -i file-name.mov -g 60 -vcodec msmpeg4v2 -acodec pcm_u8 file-name.avi

This works a charm and really shrinks the file size. My original 17 second clip in its original .mov file format weighed in at 8.5MB. Following conversion the avi clip weighed in at 855.5KB.

Of course, the conversion has a degenerative affect on playback, towit, it might look pretty bad stacked up against the original, but that's what you get. If you know a better way, or better ffmpeg conversion syntax, then hook us all up.

ADDENDUM - 12 may 2007: Well, someone recently pointed me to this video converter, WinFF. I tried it out, love it and and am happy to report that it gets the debiantutorials.org seal-of-approval for wickedness. Right on.

--machiner 14 Feb 2007


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Hemal mehta  - Not able to view video   |202.131.103.xxx |2008-04-09 01:33:36
Audio plays perfectly but there is nothing in video
Reply | Quote
keith3d  - maybe u can user '-sameq'   |124.82.229.xxx |2008-04-10 00:24:29

i just read the ffmpeg document and found out you can retain the same video quality as the input MOV.

this
is what i came up using your code above:

ffmpeg -i rawP3280031.MOV -sameq -vcodec msmpeg4v2 -acodec pcm_u8
output.avi

the file size is reduced to a reasonable output (maybe like 30%-40% of the input file size)

i
hope this will help

not much change
Reply | Quote
mdda  - Fixing the script   |24.215.201.xxx |2008-06-22 15:43:30
You've got line-continuation characters ('') at the end of each line : if you get rid of them, you should be
fine (no '>' prompt)
Reply | Quote
machiner  - Oh crap   |Publisher |2008-06-23 02:38:59
OMFG...

for fl in YOURMOVFILE.MOV
do
mencoder ${fl} -o ${fl/mov/avi} -oac mp3lame
-ovc lavc
mplayer -ao pcm -vo null -vc dummy -dumpaudio -dumpfile ${fl/mov/mp3}
${fl/mov/avi}
#rm ${fl/mov/avi}
done

Dump that at the terminal and there ya go.
Thanks a lot. Oof.

Both commands in the article work fine now. **machiner slips away...**
Reply | Quote
ajabogado  - works perfectly for me   |125.60.240.xxx |2008-11-19 04:51:57
Works well in my case. I used your ffmpeg guide in Ubuntu 8.10. The thing is that, the .avi format (output)
had a bigger file size compared with the .mov format but the quality of the video display was retained. I'll
just reduce the size of the .avi using Avidemux. Thanks and cheers.
Reply | Quote

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Last Updated on Monday, 23 June 2008 03:58