Converting .MOV to DV-AVI

[Niki Burony]

I have a Nikon Coolpix 8800 camera which takes .MOV movies. Occasionally, when I only have my camera with me, I end up using this to take a minute or 2 vido.
I have read on this forum many times recommending to convert the .MOV files to DV-AVI. I haven't quite figured out why yet because when I use the .MOV clips in my movie, they seem to work find - I don't notice a difference.

But in following the recommendations, I have the Quicktime program which allows me to export the .MOV and convert. However, I'm not sure which "settings" I should be using when I do this.
Can someone tell me exactly what video (and probably audio) settings I need to choose to export this as?

I tried a to play around with it a bit, and the clips I create play very choppy.

Thanks
Niki

[Steve Grisetti]

DV-AVI (An AVI using the DV codec) is the ideal format for Premiere Elements. If you've got Quicktime Pro, it should be pretty simple to convert those MOVs to DV-AVIs.

Otherwise, the program Super is a free download that will do it.
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

[Niki Burony]

Steve - I have Quicktime Pro.
So when I go to export, there is a drop down box with different file types. I choose .AVI - right? But there are also some "options" boxes which when clicked give you some choices for type, and quality, etc, etc.
Any recommendations?

[Steve Grisetti]

The AVI you want is Panasonic DV codec, Niki.

[RJ Johnston]

In Premiere Elements version 4.0, you can import video with the .dv extension, which indicates a raw dv file without any wrapper. My experience is that Quicktime Pro does a better job of converting .mov files to .dv files than it does to dv-avi files, especially when the frame rate of the .mov file is something like 11, or 20. Premiere Elements 4.0 treats the .DV just like a DV-AVI file in that you don't have to render a preview file when you add the clip to the timeline. There's no red line.

In Premiere Elements 3.0, my strategy was to first convert the MOV to DV, then the DV to DV-AVI. Even that is better than going straight from MOV to DV-AVI when framerates other than 29.97 NTSC or 25 PAL are involved.

[Niki Burony]

Thanks guys, that has really helped!
Niki

[Barb O]

In Premiere Elements 3.0, my strategy was to first convert the MOV to DV, then the DV to DV-AVI. Even that is better than going straight from MOV to DV-AVI when framerates other than 29.97 NTSC or 25 PAL are involved.

Rob,

Your observations are very interesting and I think that converting first to DV format may also help some 3G2 format videos that a friend and I have from our family's cell phones.
Did you use Quicktime to convert from DV to DV-AVI?
If yes, I think that you would have specified DV/DVCPRO NTSC for the AVI video. But what values did you specify for the audio?

[RJ Johnston]

Barb,

I used Quicktime Pro to do the conversions.

When I went from DV to DV-AVI, I used the DV/DVCPro NTSC option. For audio, I used uncompressed 16-bit 48000 Stereo.

When I went from MOV to DV, I dont remember if I selected DV or DVCPro, but taking a second look at it, it didn't matter in my case. The audio in the MOV file was only 16K mono to begin with. The DVCPro option limits your audio choices to higher audio standards.

Note that in PE4, you can just add the .dv files directly to the media bin.