Posted Saturday, June 9, 2012 @ 04:57 AM
Hi Jorgen, Guys,
I’m having real trouble trying to convert my GoPro MP4 files to .avi, .wmv or anything else I can work with in Windows Movie Maker, so I would be really grateful if you Jorgen, or anybody else, can help me out here.
If you can help, the best way to reply might be to copy and paste this text into your word processing program (Word?) and amend appropriately in capital letters, then re-post. That should save a bit of time.
I open the appropriate MP4 file in VLC (by double-clicking on that file, because VLC seems to have made itself the default program for playing anything).
Pause the playback.
Click on ‘media’ (drop-down box, top left corner).
Click on "convert/save".
In the pop-up box there is a box where you browse and mark the file to be converted.
Click on the ‘Add’ button, select your required file source, and it appears in the big box alongside. In this case, my GoPro file is 445,658kb.
In the drop down menu in the lower part of the same box, slightly to the right of the middle there is a drop down-box marked "convert/save". Choose "convert" (last of the list).
Specify where you want the converted file to be saved, using ‘destination file’ and ‘Browse’, and choose a name for the converted file.
Here Jorgen says, ‘and make sure the "AVI" format is set in the next pop-up box in which you choose where to save your converted file. Press convert and go make yourself a cup of coffee. Or three- it takes some time!’
My problem is that ‘AVI’ is not one of the proffered available formats. .WMV, WMA and .MPG are available, among many others, and I can work in Movie Maker with those, but when I make that choice, I end up with a smaller file (rather than a bigger one as expected) of 1,409kb in .PS format (whatever that is). This is just about recognisable as a version of the original file, but so badly corrupted as to be unusable.
I have tried clicking on the ‘Tools’ box, to the right of the ‘Profile’ box, and clicking on the ‘AVI’ dot on the ‘encapsulation’ page. The result was a bigger, 51,928kb file, but that is still one-tenth the size of the original (rather than three times its size as expected), and slightly better quality, but badly pixellated, and it is still an unusable .PS file.
However I try to save a converted file, the default format keeps coming up as: ‘containers .PS, .TS, MPG, .OGG, .ASF, .MP4, .MOV file’, but the result actually always comes out as a .PS file. This I think is where my problem lies, that .AVI is not one of the options, but I really cannot see why this should be so.
I did try to fool the system, by typing in the suffix .AVI instead of .PS in the line for the name of the saved file, and although it was a slightly bigger file (60,354kb) and of a little better quality, despite its .AVI suffix and VLC’s ability to play it, Movie Maker would not accept it, saying the file was corrupted.
I have been struggling with this all week, in an attempt to post some quite nice head-cam and fin-cam footage for everybody to see, but I have become very frustrated.
It is pretty clear that I am either missing out on a vital step, or making one step wrongly somewhere, so I would be EXTREMELY grateful if anybody can help me out here, and correct my sequence of actions as explained above.
Thanks very much for taking the time to help me.
Yours, Bob
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