AVI to iTunes

Croatian · Feb 22, 2007

i have bunch of avi shows my brother gave me and i would like to have them in my iTunes lib, what program would you guys recommend to use to convert them to the compatable format for iTunes

thank you

killmoms · Feb 22, 2007

As long as QuickTime can play them, they can go in iTunes, no conversion required. If you don't have the codecs, go get Perian for QuickTime.

Of course, they won't go on your iPod. If you want to do THAT, you do have to convert them, in which case I recommend something like iSquint or ffmpeg X.

Eraserhead · Feb 22, 2007

You should also get Flip4Mac.

killmoms · Feb 22, 2007

Eraserhead sweeps in and corrects my oversights.

Thanks! Yes, Flip4Mac is the other good QuickTime component to have.

Croatian · Feb 22, 2007

i have flip4mac and my avi files play when i open them in quck time
but for some reason i can not add them to iTunes lib so i can see them on there, does that have to do anything with them not being .mpg or mg4 format

killmoms · Feb 22, 2007

Hmm. If iTunes can't add the AVI file format even though QuickTime can play it, that's kinda weird.

In any case though, you could always just save them as .movs from QuickTime. That'll take the video and audio stream in the AVI and re-package them as a QuickTime movie without transcoding. You might need QuickTime Pro to do that.

ibglowin · Feb 22, 2007

iTunes can't play AVI (Divx) files

You need to convert them to MPEG4.

Use iSquint (shareware)

Just set the file size to be the same as the original and you can then drag and drop the converted file into itunes.

RedDragon870503 · Feb 22, 2007

Similar to above, except I prefer ffmpegx, which allows for a queue.

.avi files can NOT go into iTunes.

Blubbert · Feb 22, 2007

ibglowin said:
You need to convert them to MPEG4.

Use iSquint (shareware)

Just set the file size to be the same as the original and you can then drag and drop the converted file into itunes.

Actually, iSuqint is free. VisualHub is the pay version, and is infinitevely more powerful.

shidoshi · Feb 27, 2007

RedDragon870503 said:
.avi files can NOT go into iTunes.

Well... this isn't exactly correct.

If you have QuickTime Pro (not sure if you can do it in the non-Pro player), open your movie, and then go File > Save as > Save as reference movie. This creates a very small (usually 15k ~ 20k) file that iTunes will happily import, and through that, you can play anything that QuickTime can normally play but iTunes won't allow in its library.

There are a few major upsides to doing this, as well. You don't have to litter your music file with video files, only the reference files, so you can leave your videos where you want them. As well, while some videos can be brought into iTunes, not all allow for full editing (for example, some file types won't allow you to set the movie's thumbnail image). Reference files are fully editable under iTunes.

jl000 · Nov 8, 2007

hmm, the reference movie solution worked great for me EXCEPT for one big thing, I can't seem to set movie artwork (album artwork..). I go to get info and I set the artwork, but then it just reverts back to the thumbnail. Anyone else having that problem?

Vader · Nov 8, 2007

I believe iTunes uses the poster frame as the image. You can set the poster frame using QuickTime.

krissvl · Dec 6, 2007

Vader said:
I believe iTunes uses the poster frame as the image. You can set the poster frame using QuickTime.

No basically 'as far as im aware' you can only tag the standard itunes format with artwork, even the poster art clip thingy wont work with avi's. I have the same problem using reference files, i want artwork too..... proper weak can someone recommend a script for this????? please......

:apple:

for life (when it works)

nevyn · Dec 16, 2007

I've been looking into using iTunes to manage some avi TV shows as well as music clips and ran into the same problem, and solution. Since I think using QT-Pro to make a wrapper for the file a bit of a hack I looked into other ways to get this to work.

The reason iTunes does not play avi files can be plainly seen in iTunes.app/Info.plist under "CFBundleDocumentTypes". iTunes can also recognise video files by the optional meta-data associated with the file in place of the extension. As there is no entry for .avi and most .avi files do not have the extra meta-data iTunes does not support them.

There are three ways to get .avi files to load into the iTunes library, these are packaging it in a supported format (QT-Pro workaround), adding extra entries to the CFBundleDocumentTypes (may cause problems when updating iTunes) or adding the movie-type meta-data to the file. Adding the movie-type meta-data to the file is the quickest, easiest and safest of all of these options (IMHO).

The file-type meta-data can be changed by using Terminal or Applescript/Automator by doing either of the following (note that iTunes does not check the creator type):

Terminal (requires Apple Dev Tools)

Code:

$ SetFile -t "MooV" /path/to/movie.avi

Applescript:

Code:

tell application "Finder"
   set file type of file this_file to "MooV"
end tell

That's it. You should now be able to drag and drop the movie into iTunes.

The next step would be to create a Folder Action or a Droplet that adds the movie-type meta and adds the file to iTunes, see below:

Code:

(*add movie to iTunes

The script will add OSList file-type information to a list of files.  This identifies them 
as movie files, the files are then imported into iTunes.

TO DO:
  Verification of file list passed as video files
  Growl integration (if installed)
  Move repeat loop into separate object script to clean-up code.
*)

--Folder Action [Attach to a folder in Finder]
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving file_list
	repeat with each_file in file_list
		try
			tell application "Finder" to set file type of file each_file to "MooV"
		end try
	end repeat
	tell application "iTunes" to add file_list
end adding folder items to

--Droplet [Compile and drop items onto application]
on open file_list
	repeat with each_file in file_list
		try
			tell application "Finder" to set file type of file each_file to "MooV"
		end try
	end repeat
	tell application "iTunes" to add file_list
end open

Note: you can also use applescript to set the video type (ie movie, music video or TV Show).

I've reposted this at http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?t=214705 where it may eventually find it's way to Doug's Applescript page which is one of the first places I looked for something like this (instead of writing it).

penter · Jan 1, 2008

You should definitly get the perian codec. That should help.

Here are also quicktime components:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/resources/components.html

For video conversion (to have your videos play in your ipod) i second iSquint (http://www.isquint.org/)

But if you are willing to pay for a great product (this is worth it, I'm telling you), then you sould get VisualHub:

http://www.techspansion.com/visualhub/

penter · Jan 1, 2008

jl000 said:
hmm, the reference movie solution worked great for me EXCEPT for one big thing, I can't seem to set movie artwork (album artwork..). I go to get info and I set the artwork, but then it just reverts back to the thumbnail. Anyone else having that problem?

I think i know what you're talking about. i think i had that too, it's weird.
I remember having to set my album artwork to be the same for all of my family guy episodes, since i was originally trying to get different album artworks for different seasons, but that didnt work. Also, what I figured, is that you have to go to each movie file INDIVIDUALLY to 1) delete the current album artowrk 2) without closing the info window, (doing so would revert the album artwork to what it was) paste or drag the desired artwork.

I'm not 100% about all this, since this was a while back, but i know that i succeeded in it. If what i said doesn't work, or make any sense, then just try playing around with it, there has to be a workaround. try working with individual files, rather than changing multiple at a time.
Also, Go to Doug's Applescript page. That Really helped, when i was trying to work with individual files but didn't want to copy, and re-copy the others to the desktop (putting the hard drive to work, basically). What i did was to just change the video kind of all the files of a certain tv show with Doug's script except for one, that way you can work with an individual file, without actually having to move/copy/paste/delete the files all around in your hard drive.

I hope i made some sense, and i hope this is what you were talking about.

trev · Jan 1, 2008

I prefer iSquint... very good program.

Sandpiper · Jan 4, 2009

I prefer typing this in the Terminal for setting the movie-type meta-data on a complete folder of .avi files.

Code:

$ SetFile -t "MooV" /path/to/movies/*.avi

After the files have been imported in iTunes, it takes a really long time to change the tags or to start playing the movies. Anyone else has this?

OZMP · Jan 5, 2009

http://handbrake.fr/

I use Handbrake

Greendave · Jan 6, 2009

Brilliant - but 1 more thing

Applescript:

Code:

tell application "Finder"
   set file type of file this_file to "MooV"
end tell

That's it. You should now be able to drag and drop the movie into iTunes.

The next step would be to create a Folder Action or a Droplet that adds the movie-type meta and adds the file to iTunes, see below:

Code:

(*add movie to iTunes

The script will add OSList file-type information to a list of files.  This identifies them 
as movie files, the files are then imported into iTunes.

TO DO:
  Verification of file list passed as video files
  Growl integration (if installed)
  Move repeat loop into separate object script to clean-up code.
*)

--Folder Action [Attach to a folder in Finder]
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving file_list
	repeat with each_file in file_list
		try
			tell application "Finder" to set file type of file each_file to "MooV"
		end try
	end repeat
	tell application "iTunes" to add file_list
end adding folder items to

--Droplet [Compile and drop items onto application]
on open file_list
	repeat with each_file in file_list
		try
			tell application "Finder" to set file type of file each_file to "MooV"
		end try
	end repeat
	tell application "iTunes" to add file_list
end open

Note: you can also use applescript to set the video type (ie movie, music video or TV Show).

Brilliant, scripts work perfectly - but I only want to add a reference file so I am just changing the type and then dragging the files onto iTunes whilst holding the alt key. Can the script tell iTunes to add the file without importing it? Thanks

Stoo22 · May 1, 2010

THE easy way

Best way to do it is create a reference file. You dont need quicktime pro to do this. Just download QT SYNC which is a free program used to correct out of sync video/audio. Also handy to have

Open the movie file with QT sync and click save as, save as .mov reference file, then go to itunes and add to library . make sure you click the .mov file and not the .avi when adding.

You will need to keep the avi file as the .mov is a reference only but its only a few KBs and saves the hassle of re encoding or payin for programs like videodrive.

job done

penter · May 12, 2010

re-awakening the dead, much? haha

sDJ · Jun 4, 2010

File Size Blow out

Hi All,

I know this thread is pretty much dead but 1 quick question - when saving an AVI as a MOV container in MPEG Streamclip to dump in to itunes the file size blows out to over a 1GB for a 200MB AVI in some cases. Am I doing something wrong?

Cheers!

spinnerlys · Jun 4, 2010

sDJ said:
Hi All,

I know this thread is pretty much dead but 1 quick question - when saving an AVI as a MOV container in MPEG Streamclip to dump in to itunes the file size blows out to over a 1GB for a 200MB AVI in some cases. Am I doing something wrong?

Cheers!

Which codec and what settings are you using (resolution, audio, ...)?

Greendave · Jun 4, 2010

sDJ said:
Hi All,

I know this thread is pretty much dead but 1 quick question - when saving an AVI as a MOV container in MPEG Streamclip to dump in to itunes the file size blows out to over a 1GB for a 200MB AVI in some cases. Am I doing something wrong?

Cheers!

Have you tried using QT with perian installed and just save as a .mov or using one of the AppleScripts out there to just change the creator type so it is readable by iTunes?

AVI to iTunes

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