This seems to be the big issue that no one knows
how to do easily. Everyone who has ever asked this on the Newsgroups
will either get the age old sarcastic remark: "just buy Quicktime"
or "Premiere does a great job!" And this is usually
from people who pretend they actually bought the products
instead of going to astalavista.box.sk and cracking them! Well
dargsarnit! Who wants to buy Quicktime just to convert from its
crappy uneditable format? Or spend hundreds of bucks buying Premiere
for the same reason?! In that case try my method that doesn't
require illegal software or the need to shell out megabucks!
I won't lie to you, though, there is no easy way
to convert every Quicktime movie. So this is just the easiest
method (other than Quicktime Pro) that I have found.
Install Bink and start it up, you will then get
the following window. Select your Quicktime movie and hit the
'convert a file' button.
Up will appear the conversion options. First tell
it where to save your final AVI file (A).
Then all you need to do to start the conversion is to press 'convert'
(E).
But there are a few other options you may wish to
use before you convert. You can crop the image to a certain size
(C) - it doesn't support resizing
unfortunately. If you need to resize or edit the video in any
way I suggest you convert it and then do so in VirtualDub. You
can also select how much of the video is to be converted (B)
by selecting what frame to start the conversion from and what
frame to end it. Finally we have the Audio Samplerate conversion
(D). This is not really needed
most of the time because it may cause synch problems if we change
it from the original. The only time you may want to use it is
if you intend on converting straight to VCD which requires you
use a 44100Hz samplerate. But I'd prefer to prepare my audio with
VirtualDub instead. Anyway, you can experiment with the rest of
the settings if you find the final video doesn't look as good
as you hoped.
Once you click on the Convert
button you will be asked what format you wish to convert the video
into. If it is a short clip and you intend on editing it in VirtualDub,
you would probably be best off using Uncompressed
AVI i.e.:
If it is quite big but you still want to do lots
of editing I suggest you choose MJPEG because this offers the
best editing. The best quality MJPEG is the uncompressed Huffyuv
format. But this sometimes has framerate problems so check your
final file.
Another alternative is the PICVideo MJPEG codec
which is a good trade between compression and quality.
If you don't want to do much editing or you just
want to convert straight to Divx just choose the Divx codec you
like best:
After you have decided press OK
and you will see the progress box below:
That's it! The audio is always uncompressed PCM
as far as I can tell, so you will need to recompress it using
VirtualDub as usual. See my multiplexing guide for details of
that.
Troubleshooting
The audio is out of synch, what can I do?
Make sure you are using the correct samplerate used in the
original movie. Then use my AVI synching guide to put things
right again.
Bink will not convert the MOV file at all?!
It is not a guarantee that Bink can convert every kind of
Quicktime format (there are a few kinds). But I have tried
it on a few including the best format i.e. Sorenson and it
worked fine.
There is no audio, why?
Quicktime movies sometimes have copy protection installed
which will disable the audio. If you have Total Recorder you
can get it with that after and then multiplex it to the AVI
using VirtualDub (see my multiplexing guide for details of
this).
Getting the audio with Total Recorder is easy
enough:
Open your video in Quicktime or Media Player depending
on what plays it. Then press the red recording button at the bottom
right of the picture below. It shouldn't start recording until
you play your video file. Start your video file playing.
If the format supports it, you can speed up the
process using the following method: Go into Options
> 'Recording source parameters...
Choose the Software accelerated
recording/converting option and also check the Max Speed
option. This will speed up the conversion to many times the speed
it would normally take.
When you are finished save the wave file and you
are done :-)
Note: if it starts to work fine
and then you get nothing but garbage for sound this is because
you have a messed up cracked version of Total Recorder. You need
to fully register the version of Total Recorder which requires
a serial number for it to work correct. Most cracks will cause
this security measure.
Duplication of links or content is strictly
prohibited. (C) NICKY PAGE 2000
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