mp4 to avi

[coyote2]

What's the best way to convert an .mp4 to .avi, please?

[mike20021969]

Freemake Video Converter converts to AVI.
http://www.freemake.com/en/offline/offline_all/

[hello_hello]

There's quite a few "one click" type programs for converting video which make it fairly easy. Format Factory, AnyVideoConverter, Super Video Converter etc.

Or you could try HDConvertToX (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145577) or MeGUI (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=96032).

The latter two will probably have a bit more of a learning curve.

[Chetwood]

XMedia Recode.

[Sharktooth]

there is no best as per forum rules (http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm).

[coyote2]

there is no best as per forum rules (http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm).Thank you; please forgive me, I was such a noob I didn't appreciate the need for more information. May I please rephrase my request for a software recommendation:

I'm seeking to convert an .m4v file to .avi. I'd like to have the option to do as little processing as possible to it (for example I'd like to leave the audio alone). I'm interested in quality, and in not spending a lot of, or any, money.

While I'm still a relative video noob, on another project since my post I have learned some of the basics of tools such as Avidemux, VirtualDub, and VirtualDubMod. So I won't be scared off by a tool with more than one button to push to do the job.

[nixo]

I'd like to have the option to do as little processing as possible to it (for example I'd like to leave the audio alone).

It depends what is in your file. If it is CFR and doesn't contain AAC, then a straight remux would be doable. Try opening the file in Mediainfo and post the output.

--
Nikolaj

[Ghitulescu]

AVI is just a container, do you have any preferrences in terms of codecs?

[coyote2]

It depends what is in your file. If it is CFR and doesn't contain AAC, then a straight remux would be doable. Try opening the file in Mediainfo and post the output.
Thank you very much, nixo! I just tried to attach jpeg or gif of the GSpot; no matter what it says "This is not a valid image file:".

Here is the MediaInfo:

Complete name : C:\work\curtis-NEW\The Living Dead (1995)\Part1-OnTheDesperateEdgeOfNow.m4v
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID : mp42
File size : 468 MiB
Duration : 58mn 6s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 1 126 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2007-10-12 02:18:21
Tagged date : UTC 2007-10-12 02:45:33
Writing application : HandBrake 0.9.2 2008022300

Video
ID : 1
Format : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile : Simple@L1
Format settings, BVOP : No
Format settings, QPel : No
Format settings, GMC : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix : Default (H.263)
Codec ID : 20
Duration : 58mn 6s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 1 000 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 3 549 Kbps
Width : 512 pixels
Height : 384 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.203
Stream size : 415 MiB (89%)
Writing library : Lavc51.40.4
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2007-10-12 02:18:21
Tagged date : UTC 2007-10-12 02:45:33

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : LC
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 58mn 6s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 124 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 147 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 51.6 MiB (11%)
Encoded date : UTC 2007-10-12 02:18:21
Tagged date : UTC 2007-10-12 02:45:33

Text
ID : 3
Format : Apple text
Codec ID : text
Duration : 58mn 6s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 0
Stream size : 184 Bytes (0%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2007-10-12 02:18:21
Tagged date : UTC 2007-10-12 02:45:33
Duration_LastFrame : -353480

[coyote2]

AVI is just a container, do you have any preferrences in terms of codecs?
Thank you very much, Ghitulescu!

I would like both quality, and for it to be highly compatible in universal standalones: Xvid is the suggestion I've gotten so far.

[hello_hello]

The video in the original m4v should already be compatible with standalones. You'll probably need to convert the audio to MP3.
There's several "manual" ways to do the job, but given the type of audio/video in the original file, I'd try one of the programs I mentioned in my previous post (AnyVideoConverter, Format Factory, Super Video Converter). They're all free.
I'm fairly sure all three have an option when converting, to copy (not encode) the original video or audio stream, assuming the output container (AVI in your case) is compatible. So you'd set up your encode to convert to AVI while encoding the audio to MP3 but while only copying the video stream.

[nixo]

I would use Libav like this:

avconv -i "foo.m4v" -vcodec copy -vtag XVID/xvid -acodec libmp3lame -ab 192k "foo.avi"

You can get a recent build here: http://win32.libav.org/win32/?C=M;O=D

--
Nikolaj

[Ghitulescu]

The video in the original m4v should already be compatible with standalones. You'll probably need to convert the audio to MP3.

I would agree. I would suggest further a CBR MP3 instead of a VBR one. It appears that the file you have is apple-compatible, so if you have one iProduct you probably don't need to convert it any more.
However, the best move you can do is to check several encodes on the player/s of your choice and pick up the encoding parameters that suits you best (quality vs size vs portability).

[chilledinsanity]

Hey, I'm looking to do something very similar, except in my case, I want to convert a x264 MKV to either uncompressed or lossless AVI. Could someone make a recommendation based on this criteria? I noticed several of these programs only allow for lossy codec for AVI transcoding.

[hello_hello]

Use VirtualDubMod to open the MKV. Select DirectShowSource in the AVIsynth template drop down box at the bottom of the "file/open" window.
Under the video/compression menu, select uncompressed RGB, or better still, if you have ffdshow installed you can choose ffdshow as the encoder and then configure it to use HuffYUV as the encoding method (it's lossless) which should give you a smaller file size.
Then just use the File/SaveAs menu to save the video as an AVI.

Alternative there's a MKV plugin for VirtualDub (not VirtualDubMod) which should allow you to open the MKV file directly instead of via DirectShow and then save it as a lossless AVI the same way.
http://home.comcast.net/~fcchandler/index.html

What format is the audio in? The first method should save it to the AVI uncompressed (although you can convert it), but I'm not sure about the second method. Depending on the type of audio you may be able to extract it from the original MKV and add it to the uncompressed AVI without re-encoding it.

[chilledinsanity]

Well I tried your method using Virtualdubmod and every mode is greyed out except direct stream copy, making uncompressedRGB not an option. I'll check out the plugin for virtualdub however.

The audio isn't an issue. I'm creating videos and I wanted to use MKV to archive them, but I also want the ability to convert them back to something I can edit in AVI in case I need to come back to them later for some reason. I store the audio as a separate file before doing the encoding.

[hello_hello]

Well I tried your method using Virtualdubmod and every mode is greyed out except direct stream copy, making uncompressedRGB not an option. I'll check out the plugin for virtualdub however.

Having had a chance to re-think my original idea and maybe realise I was missing the obvious......
I'm not sure why Direct Stream Copy is the only save method available (I just used the same method to open an MKV file and could re-compress it without any trouble), however....

If you can open the MKV using VirtualDubMod via AVIsynth and DirectShowSource, then wouldn't VirtualDubMod be displaying the uncompressed video it's being fed by AVIsynth? Therefore, using direct stream copy as the save method should give you an AVI containing uncompressed video.

I just saved a small portion of the video I opened and it indeed seemed to be saving as uncompressed YUV.

You could also open the MKV using VirtualDubMod via a ffmpegsource AVIsynth script if you want 100% frame accuracy, although in my experience using DirectShowSource to decode a video from start to finish (not editing) never presents any frame accuracy problems.
http://ffmpegsource.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/ffms2-avisynth.html

I tend to use a very simple script for opening just the video using VirtualDub(Mod), such as:

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\ffms2\ffms2.dll")
FFVideoSource("E:\Movie.mkv")

The first time you open the script there'll be a delay while the MKV file is indexed, but as per the DirectShowSource method I think VirtualDub(Mod) should be able to save the uncompressed video AVIsynth is feeding it simply by using direct steam copy.

[chilledinsanity]

I tried using Directshowsource and it just kept giving me errors. I think it might be related to me using the 64 bit version of avisynth, since I've never been able to get the 32 bit version to work properly on Win7 64 bit.

The good news is I figured out how to do this via ffmpeg, so it's a non-issue.