.mov video file editing software help?

[LarryW]

My camera records in .mov format. In the past I have used prism file convertor to convert to a file that allows windows movie maker to open it. But that conversion really take the quality away. So I am curious if there is an editor besides windows movie maker to edit a .mov file that is free?
Thanks in advance of coarse!

[George]

I use Pinnacle Studio. It does .mov and a half-dozen others. I've been able to make DVDs combining video shot in mutliple formats.

[Rolling_X_6]

I use Pinnacle Studio. It does .mov and a half-dozen others. I've been able to make DVDs combining video shot in mutliple formats.

Pinnacle Studio is a good piece of software, but it is not free. Just the software itself--without any sort of cature card or other such hardware--is probably $100.00 or more. I am not sure, exactly. But, it is good stuff.

[Roger S]

Larry, I'd google "free mov editor"

VideoHelp.com - Forum, Guides, Tools and hardware lists is a good place for anyone to delve into video/audio

[Mike]

Just for the conversion you will probably be best to go to AVI and then edit that in Windows Movie Maker. That should give you the best result. There are a handful of programs out there that will convert .mov to AVI. I have used Quicktime Pro and it does a great job of converting the files however it isn't free. A friend of mine sent me this link a while back. The first download is shareware conversion software that should work: Bink Downloads and here is a how-to for that software: MOV to AVI

It should convert the .mov file to a .AVI file that WMM can read. If you have problems getting an AVI file to work properly in WMM make sure all of your codecs are up-to-date. You should be able to get a decent quality file out of WMM. Hopefully it is your initial conversion that is reducing the quality and not movie maker itself. Just be sure to use the "save movie file" option and then click on "other settings" and then choose "High quality large video" to get the best results. It's been a couple of years since I have used WMM so the settings may be a little different that I remember

[LarryW]

Thanks for your help guys!

I ended up downloading and uninstalling all sorts of stuff, lol. I ended up taking Mike advice and but using prism because i could do all the videos at once and converted them to .avi. Then used wmm saved in "high quality large video" as Mike suggested. Not as good as the original but not to bad I guess. Thanks for the help.

[Roger S]

I looked around a bit yesterday.. it said .mov is a container, like avi, etc, that has data to allow easy editing w/o re encoding. So an mov editor could edit and save w/o any conversion or re encoding the edited file.

If you want to try VirtualDub, here's a link page. I havn't tried these particular links but I use V Dub myself. You will also need the plug ins (codecs) on the page, depending on what you want to do. mov, mp4, etc. I had V Dub for 5 years before I got to poking around and figuring it out. There are user guides on the 'net for it.


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