converted mov. files to avi files, why so big?

[shamoo]

hello all, i'm not sure that i am in the right place but i guess someone will know how to help me,, i hope..

I recorded a video on a hd camcorder, it saves the files as mov. files, i want to burn this onto a dvd, but i want to edit the movie so it looks nice,i have premier pro 6.5 and although it says mov. files are supported it never imports them. so with the program i got with the camcorder (presto video works 6)i can convert the files to avi, (i was thinking i could then edit these in premier pro, however i have 4 mov. files, now the biggest mov. file is 477mb yet when it is converted it goes to 76.6gb!! how and why does it do this? i dont want to lose any quality other wise it would be pointless using a hd camcorder? can anyone help?

[neuron2]

What codec (Xvid, DivX, uncompressed RGB, etc.) did you use for the AVI file?

[shamoo]

i dont know? how would i know?

[setarip_old]

Hi!

Load the .AVI into GSpot - and post a screen capture back here.

I'd speculate that the .AVI contains Uncompressed video...

[Ghitulescu]

file is 477mb yet when it is converted it goes to 76.6gb!! how and why does it do this? i dont want to lose any quality other wise it would be pointless using a hd camcorder? can anyone help?

Quality means space. You can compute yourself the amount of data needed by any uncompressed video: frame wide x frame height x fps x bpp (for 720p24 you'll have 1280x720x24x8 = 22.118.400 Bytes each second).

[Ghitulescu]

I recorded a video on a hd camcorder, it saves the files as mov. files, i want to burn this onto a dvd
Well, it's not very nice to say it, but a camcorder that saves the HD movie in .MOV format will give you no real video quality (I assume it's an Aiptek or a clone). Normally a good HD camcorder uses M2TS format (JVC, Canon, Panasonic, Sony), maybe under different file extentions (like .MOD, .MTS), which can be almost directly used for BD or AVCHD, and for which lots of commercial and free software exist.

MOV on the other hand is a proprietary format of QuickTime, which is less supported on PC than on MACs (I've seen lots of complains about the compatibility of camera/camcorder MOV files even with QuickTime Pro itself - which traces the error to the MOV encoder in camera/camcorder). You are bound by QuickTime or the proprietary software that comes with the camera/camcorder.

How to work your HD movie into a DVD is here :search:. Unless your clip is actually h.264 wrapped in MOV, you have to re-encode it to one of the accepted codecs, then to author the BD5/9. I assume you want an AVCHD DVD (HD) and not a regular DVD (SD).

[Gokumon]

What exactly does the container have to do with the quality of the video? One can stick h.264 into both MOV and M2TS and the quality will be exactly the same.

[Ghitulescu]

What exactly does the container have to do with the quality of the video? One can stick h.264 into both MOV and M2TS and the quality will be exactly the same.
You're absolutely right, but I was not talking about this. I was takling about the video quality before being encapsulated (lenses, CCD/CMOS, encoder chip).

It's not the container, it's the camera/camcorder type. I'm not 100% sure but I think it's a question of licences that have to be paid or commercial agreements. So far I know, all the cameras (including the Canons DSLRs) shoot in MOV, while the above average camcorders use M2TS format.

To this end, you won't loose too much quality even if you're forced to reencode to h.264 (if not already present).

Just found a link:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/277446.aspx

[benwaggoner]

FWIW, all the camcorders I've seen that capture to a native .mov use Photo or Motion JPEG as codecs.

While there's no reason .mov couldn't be used for a very high quality, in practice it's not a good sign.

Apple themselves have largely abandoned .mov in favor of .mp4 as the wrapper for pretty much anything other than content creation.

[Dark Shikari]

Apple themselves have largely abandoned .mov in favor of .mp4 as the wrapper for pretty much anything other than content creation.For practical purposes, mp4 basically is mov.

[smok3]

Well, it's not very nice to say it, but a camcorder that saves the HD movie in .MOV format will give you no real video quality

any decent disk-recording system should give you the ability to enwrap (the word just invented) video into various things.

[benwaggoner]

For practical purposes, mp4 basically is mov.
Indeed. It's more a sign of the age of the implementation than anything else.

Like if you find a ".asf" file, it's probably chock full of 90's codec badness, even though ASF files can look fine.