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Converting .AVI to MP4?

Cheap Skate

Hi guys, I'm very new to this forum (I just joined to post this) so please go easy on me!
My aim is to be able to put clips of movies into iMovie, then on to Youtube.
Now, I have a certain film, which is .avi, which I'd like to do this with. So I'm reading through this thread and seeing all sorts of programmes and software, which I'm completely rubbish at grasping.
So my question is, what file type do i need to convert my .avi file to, so it can be put into iMovie, and will Quicktime Pro convert this for me? I think that if QTPro will do this for me, I see it as worth the £20 of purchase.
Thanks a lot in advance for any help! Josh
 
touchdownjesus4 said:
Yeah it will. You can use handbrake to convert it to m4v and then import it into itunes. Do not mess with any of the advanced settings in handbrake unless you know exactly what you are doing. Just use the default settings for the m4v which is one of the basic presets.
Click to expand...

I get very poor results when converting using Handbrake with some video files for some reason (blocky and other visual artifacts). The same settings work fine with some other sources. The worst part is that some files are H264 already and are simply in an MKV container. Instead of just changing the container, Handbrake wants to re-encode the entire file, which lowers the quality of the encode no matter what setting you use and sometimes seems to screw things up visually (e.g. AVI to M4V, which probably does need re-encoding is particularly prone to odd grey/black background glitches. iSquint seems to do better, but has no real choices to organizing multiple soundtrack options, etc.).

I'm trying out Any Video Converter on my PC right now and see if it does any better....
 
MagnusVonMagnum said:
I get very poor results when converting using Handbrake with some video files for some reason (blocky and other visual artifacts). The same settings work fine with some other sources. The worst part is that some files are H264 already and are simply in an MKV container. Instead of just changing the container, Handbrake wants to re-encode the entire file, which lowers the quality of the encode no matter what setting you use and sometimes seems to screw things up visually (e.g. AVI to M4V, which probably does need re-encoding is particularly prone to odd grey/black background glitches. iSquint seems to do better, but has no real choices to organizing multiple soundtrack options, etc.).

I'm trying out Any Video Converter on my PC right now and see if it does any better....
Click to expand...

They also have AnyVideoConverter for mac as a free download, and it does pretty well. Not always spot on, but most of the time.
 
I prefer to use HandbrakeCLI for my work. This little chunk of code I found on the HandbrakeCLI forums and modified it to work for .avi.

Code: 
#!/bin/sh

for i in $(find $1 -name *.avi) ; do

HandBrakeCLI -i $i -o {$i%.avi}.mp4 --preset="Normal" --two-pass

done

Save that code as something like Convert.sh. Then go into terminal and type "chmod 755 " and then drag/drop the sh file into the terminal window and press enter.

Install HandbrakeCLI to /usr/bin/.

Now open Terminal and cd into the directory with the vids. Copy Convert.sh into that directory and type "./Convert.sh" and hit enter.

That will convert every single avi in that directory and all avi's in lower directories recursively one right after another. I used it to convert my vids. I literally had that shell script running for a couple of weeks non-stop. Worked flawlessly.

Also, it will work with any vid file if you change avi everywhere in the script to the appropriate suffix. You can also alter the arguments if you don't prefer the "Normal" preset.
 
If you want to convert them to put them on your iPod touch, use the VLC for iPhone app. No conversion required.
 
I found out why I was getting poor results from Handbrake. I had my usual setting with decomb/detelecine enabled (I read before on a message board that it doesn't hurt to have these enabled regardless of whether a movie needs it or not; for DVDs this always appeared to be true, but for AVI files, it screws up the video. Both should be turned OFF for converting AVI to MP4/M4V.) Then the output was fine.
 
Dalton63841 said:
I prefer to use HandbrakeCLI for my work. This little chunk of code I found on the HandbrakeCLI forums and modified it to work for .avi.

Code: 
#!/bin/sh

for i in $(find $1 -name *.avi) ; do

HandBrakeCLI -i $i -o {$i%.avi}.mp4 --preset="Normal" --two-pass

done

Save that code as something like Convert.sh. Then go into terminal and type "chmod 755 " and then drag/drop the sh file into the terminal window and press enter.

Install HandbrakeCLI to /usr/bin/.

Now open Terminal and cd into the directory with the vids. Copy Convert.sh into that directory and type "./Convert.sh" and hit enter.

That will convert every single avi in that directory and all avi's in lower directories recursively one right after another. I used it to convert my vids. I literally had that shell script running for a couple of weeks non-stop. Worked flawlessly.

Also, it will work with any vid file if you change avi everywhere in the script to the appropriate suffix. You can also alter the arguments if you don't prefer the "Normal" preset.
Click to expand...

Hello,

I can't figure out what's wrong when I try this. I get the following error:

Code: 
sudo: ./convert.sh: command not found

I've got HandbrakeCLI in the /usr/bin/ directory. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Scott
 
When I use HandBrake to convert .AVI to .MP4 (no matter which preset I use) result file is always smaller than original, sometimes quite substantially.

For example :
.avi 365MB ===> .mp4 146MB
.avi 1.56GB ==> .mp4 890MB
.avi 890MB ===> .mp4 689MB

Is it normal?
 
pumba said:
When I use HandBrake to convert .AVI to .MP4 (no matter which preset I use) result file is always smaller than original, sometimes quite substantially.

For example :
.avi 365MB ===> .mp4 146MB
.avi 1.56GB ==> .mp4 890MB
.avi 890MB ===> .mp4 689MB

Is it normal?
Click to expand...

All depends on the preset, but it can be.

I use handbrake for everything, usually on universal (normal in windows) setting, which is good for big screens (AppleTV) and little ones (ipad/ipod/iphone).
 
pumba said:
When I use HandBrake to convert .AVI to .MP4 (no matter which preset I use) result file is always smaller than original, sometimes quite substantially.

For example :
.avi 365MB ===> .mp4 146MB
.avi 1.56GB ==> .mp4 890MB
.avi 890MB ===> .mp4 689MB

Is it normal?
Click to expand...

If you use the x264 encoder within HandBrake, then you use an encoder which is at least 4x more efficient than Xvid or DivX. The file size depends on the quality of the input file and on the encoder settings.
 
Another one, that I"m not sure has been mentioned, but is worth a look is VideoMonkey. It's free, and started a bit rough, but has come a long way.

It's fairly easy to setup, has some level of control over the conversion, and handles most file formats well.

It's based on the VisualHub work (which if you've used VisualHub you know it was f-in Awesome!).

You might give that a try as well.
 
rowley said:
All depends on the preset, but it can be.

I use handbrake for everything, usually on universal (normal in windows) setting, which is good for big screens (AppleTV) and little ones (ipad/ipod/iphone).
Click to expand...

I use either Apple/Apple TV preset or Apple/Universal or Normal/Regular/High - all render almost same filesize

Now I tried VideoMonkey and for the same original .avi file it converts it to much larger file if run with Apple TV preset. Strange.

Original .avi file size : 1.57 GB
HandBrake output file size (Preset: 'Apple TV') : 968 MB
VideoMonkey output file size (Preset: '1st Gen Apple TV', H264, Quality: standard): 1.4 GB
VideoMonkey output file size (Preset: 'MP4', H264, Quality: standard): 963 MB

I'm totally lost and confused and I need to convert my library of about 600 movies to iTunes/AppleTV so I'm trying to find the best way to do it, keeping quality as close to originals as possible. I do not want to convert 600 files and then realize that I have to redo it again ...

Any advice will be appreciated - which program and preset should I use...
Thanks
 
Last edited:
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