Rewrap .MOV to AVI._HELP!
 

How come there doesn't seem to be any software out there that will enable you to rewrap .mov HDV files in an AVI wrapper.

There are programs like Clipwrap that perform this task and take your HDV m2t files and rewrap them in a QT wrapper. But there doesn't seem to be any that go the opposite way.

Here's my perdicament...

I captured 10 hours of footage shot on my FX1's in FCP, which of course capture the HDV footage to it's own QT wrapper.

Well, I would like to take that footage and edit in on the PC side in Sony Vegas 8 instead of FCP. Unfortunately Vegas can;t work with QT HDV footage, as I only get audio and no video to work with in Vegas. I have Cineform NEOHD, so I could transcode all of that footage to a much larger AVI file.


But for times sake I would rather simply rewrap the QT files in an m2t wrapper and not have to transcode the footage.

Anyone have any solution, or am I stuck with either transcoding the footage or recaptuing it in Vegas?

Avidemux might be your answer, though I don't have any HDV format MOVs to test. It's cross platform, and among other things allows you to simply copy the video and audio data from one container to another.

Open the video in question, choose Copy from the dropdowns on the left side under both Video and Audio, and make sure Format is set to AVI (or MPEG-TS for a transport stream, assuming the video and audio are compatible with that container; in your case I think it would work). Check Video->Frame Rate to be certain the framerate of your footage is correct, then just click the Save button and enter a file name, including appropriate extension.

Robert thanks for the attempt, but it doesn't seem to work with FCP captured HDV .MOV files.

Figures...

Ah, I should have known better; if the software uses the Quicktime system to open files, you're out of luck opening HDV in Windows. Short of spending twenty bucks on the MPEG 2 playback plugin, or replacing Quicktime with Quicktime Alternative, neither of which I'd feel comfortable recommending, I can only think of one other possibility, and it may very well not work.

Yamb--Windows only, I'm afraid--is a GUI for MP4Box, a multiplexer that by itself offers only a command line interface. If you grab the installer from the downloads section of that page (the second file in the list, not the other two), you'll get everything you need.

Once it's installed, run Yamb and click Editing. The third item in the list that shows up on the right is "Click to extract streams from AVI/MP4/MOV/TS files", which is what you want. Double click that, then find the file you're trying to convert. Once you load it, you should see entries in the Content section representing the tracks in your file. Click one of them, and choose "Extract all streams to raw format" from the Options available. Hit the Next button and the streams should be extracted to the same folder as the original file, and if I'm not mistaken you should be able to import the resulting files into Vegas.

If no tracks show up under Content when you try to load the file, then Yamb is also a dead end, and unfortunately I'm out of ideas.

You might find this app helpful, there is a free trial: Calibrated{Q} XD Decode
It lets you play HDV and XDCAM files in Windows Quicktime.
(The trial puts gray bars over the image, but you can see if it will work for you)

You could then convert to AVI using quicktime pro; I also ran a quick test using mpegStreamclip, which picked up the QXD plugin somehow, and easily converted a captured FCP .mov file to AVI video and audio, and was faster than QTPro.


MpegStreamclip is free (squared5.com) but requires QuickTime to function.

/Battle Vaughan/miamiherald.com video team

Thanks for the link.
Unfortunately the problem isn't converting .MOV to .AVI as I am able to do this in Quicktime Pro right now (I have FlipfrmAC installed on my system).

I was trying to avoid the long re-encding times and simply rewrap the FCP HDV .MOV file in a Windows .AVI or M2t wrapper. As I mentioned there are programs, like ClipWrap, which can wrap .mts files in a QT wrapper, but doesn't seem to be a backwards wrapping utility.

Thanks for the help though.

It seems like I have to suck it up and work in FCP. I wanted to edit in VEGAS, because cutting and editing is so much quicker in VEGAS than FCP. Also, unfortunate is the fact, even though I was able to convert the HDV .MOV files to CF .MOV and then rewrap them for windows in an .AVI wrapper, that for some reason the Cineform .AVI files seem to constantly crash SONY VEGAS, whenever I place the clip on the timeline. Cineform .MOV files are fine, but Vegas handles .AVI files much better than .MOV for final encode. Also Vegas can preview CF files externally via Firewire or Intensity Pro card, but FCP can't preview the CF files via Firewire or Intensity Pro card.

I just can't win here.

I just did a VERY quickie test of converting a couple short MOV files
from a Canon T1i that I downloaded very recently.

On the PC...
I used VLC 0.9.8a to convert from MOV to MP4.
It went fast enough there is no way it transcoded.
It appeared to go without a hitch.

The way I got it to work was two passes...
Pass 1: MOV to MP4 file. This got the video
Pass 2: MOV to WAV file. This got the audio.

The conversion/extraction/copy went very fast.
When I played the MP4 it looked just like the original.
When I played the WAV it sounded just like the original.
The files dropped right into Vegas Movie Studio 9.

You might take a look at MediaCoder. As far as I can tell, it can transcode or rewrap just about anything you can think of.

MediaCoder - more than a universal audio/video transcoder

There's a package called MOVAVI that I use. Not sure if it will work in your case or not, but can't hurt to give it a look-see.

Jim thanks for the suggestion.
Unfortunately I just wound up recapturing all of the footage in Sony Vegas as .mt2.

What I was looking for was a way to simply re-wrap the m2v.mov file in a windows .m2t format, and avoid conversion. I had Cineform which would do the conversion, but wanted to keep in in HDV format (for storage reasons, an re-wrapping would have been the best option, as Cineform or converted HDV files are 3-5 times larger in size.

Also, for some reason the Cineform AVI files kept crashing Vegas when they were placed on the timeline. This was only with the converted CF.mov to CF.avi files wouldn't allow me to place them in Veags 8. But if I converted (to CFAVI) the re-captured m2t files form Vegas then Vegas was fine and all wnet well. But this still meant re-capturing the files in Sony Vegas.

Isn't this stuff FUN?!?!?!?!

I'm sure all of us would rather be fighting the codec and wrapper and format battles than "filming"

And after I get off this soapbox I can rant for hours about how "easy" it is to move stuff between 3D apps - that don't even agree which axis is "up" or what a dimension of "2" might mean!