help me re encode iv50 avi movie

[Salteh]

ive got a couple of videos on my external hard drive from my old pc that id like to be able to watch on my new macbook, the only trouble is my videos are encoded in iv50 codec which apparently macs cant play.

ive read around and it seems the only way for me to be able to watch this video is to re encode it into a format ill be able to watch on my mac using a pc.
i can borrow a friends pc and take my movies on a pendrive, im just not sure what would be best to re encode them into? and using what?

i only have the finished producted iv50 codeced .avi files, none of the source so something that will take as little away from the quality would be nice.
thanks a lot in advance if anyone can help me out

 

[MacMarvin]

They didn't port the Indeo Video codecs to OS X but there are versions for OS 9 quicktime (IV31, IV40 and IV50). What I do is boot into classic and recode them to H264 on medium quality. I can actually save some space and I don't really lose any quality. Sometimes I use high quality if the clip is important.

I only encode the video and then just copy and paste the audio (classic shares the copy/paste buffer with OS X) so that no quality is lost there at all. You need Quicktime Pro in both places.

You can also use Virtual PC or if you are on an Intel Mac use parallels. There's never likely going to be a port of those codecs as they are considered legacy codecs.

 

[Salteh]

seems like abit too much hassle for me to do it on my mac, i think itll be easier to use a pc and do it on there.
i need to find a nice easy proggy to re encode it with but im not sure what, maybe virtual dub?

 

[Makosuke]

i need to find a nice easy proggy to re encode it with but im not sure what, maybe virtual dub?

Virtual Dub is good if you're used to apps with horrifyingly confusing interfaces, or you've used it before, but if you're not fond of that sort of thing, I'd try something else if you can find anything. Not that I have any better suggestions, I'm just pointing out that it's an UGLY program even though it's very powerful.

If you have an Intel Mac, you can of course do this locally if you have Bootcamp/XP installed (or Parallels), or if you have a PPC one it's really rather easy to do in classic if you have QT pro--just install the codecs in the Classic folder, open the Classic QT player, and it'll play the videos just fine. I've done this several times, and it doesn't require a reboot or anything.