Converting m4a files for use with itunes

I have a ton of m4a files that I used with an old version of itunes, but the latest version doesn't play and won't let me import or add to my library. Please help.

Do the files play in Quicktime? Do they play in another player like VLC? On an iPod?

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How can I convert .mov files for use with other apps?

When loading movies taken on a friend's digital camera to my PC, the video files were saved as Quicktime .mov files. I am now unable to pull those files into any other software program (I want to put them onto a CD or DVD and play on external players.) How can I convert .mov files to a .wmv or .avi or mpeg?
Thanks - J
RS720G Windows XP

Kodak Digital Camera QuickTime MOV Problems
After battling a number of serious problems with the videos taken by my new Kodak Digital Camera, I decided to write up this page so that anyone searching the web would find out the true answers without as much grief!
I’ve also made some other comments about my experience with the camera, in case anyone was considering buying a Kodak camera in the near future.
I bought the camera just before Christmas 2004 in the US. At the time of writing, it is a pretty good model for domestic use—about 5.2 megapixels, costing about US$400 (or AU$600 back here in Australia). From a company as reputable as Kodak, I expected no problems.
The first disappointing thing was that the spring inside the spring-loaded battery clip, inside the camera, came loose within days. It proved impossible to reattach it without completely dismantling the camera, which (despite my engineering qualifications) I was not willing to do. This would usually have been a warranty item, but Kodak’s warranty does not extend to other countries. I’ve since had to jam cardboard in to keep the battery clip engaged, and have taped the battery bay shut to avoid it opening accidentally when taking the camera out of the case. This works fine with the docking station (an extra AU$100!), but it means I can no longer charge the battery without the docking station (since you need to take it out to charge it). I was not impressed!
The camera takes good photos, and I have no complaint with that. The controls and camera menus are well-designed. The large display is excellent.
The EasyShare software is not as easy to use as it looks, has a habit of crashing, has a web update program that is always running in the background of Windows, and transferring images is nowhere as easy or quick as it should be. I’ve now uninstalled it completely, and simply copy the photos directly from the device. (If the camera memory is nearly full, and you just want to transfer the last few photos, then it’s impossible to use the EasyShare software to browse the camera’s photos without it actually downloading the whole lot through the USB cable—and it takes forever! Copying from the device directly doesn’t hit this bug.)
The capability to take video using the camera was a great attraction when I selected it, and, if it worked properly, it would make it quite a handy little camcorder in its own right. With a 512 MB memory card in it, over an hour of video can be recorded at Video-CD quality (320 x 240 24fps video, 8 kHz audio). It’s not full digital video, but it would still be a pretty good feature for a US$400 camera. If it worked.
The first disappointing thing about taking videos is that the optical zoom cannot be adjusted while the camera is recording. It can only be adjusted between video sequences. I don’t know why this restriction was made in the design.
The real problems, however, start when you try to do anything with the video clips captured by the camera. Kodak has chosen to capture the videos in QuickTime format. This is fine—QuickTime is, technically, excellent—except that there is no simple way to convert QuickTime MOV files to AVI or MPEG or VCD. The Kodak software comes with a QuickTime player, so you can see the video clips on the computer you installed the software on—and they look good. Problem is that you can’t just dump those MOV files onto your Video-CD creator (it will usually want AVI or MPEG files).
It takes some time to realise that Kodak have not even bothered to include any software with the camera that can convert these MOV files to a more useful format. This is a serious PR blunder, and anyone bitten by this is unlikely to go near the Kodak brand ever again.
After some web searching, owners of these cameras generally find that the best (only?) freeware solution to convert MOV to AVI is Bink and Smacker’s RADtools program.
RADtools is amazingly powerful for the price (i.e. free), but it hits two fundamental problems with Kodak Digital Camera MOV video files, that are the fault of the Kodak camera, not RADtools. (I know this because every other MOV converter hits the same problems—except one, as you will see below.)
The first problem is that the sound cannot be converted properly. When you convert any Kodak MOV files, there is an “aliasing” of the sound at the upper frequencies. This is a technical description—you get a whispery, tinny, C3PO type of echo to everything. It really destroys the quality of the video clips (especially bad when I am trying to capture priceless memories of my 4- and 7-year-old sons—I don’t want their voices destroyed for all time).
Every conversion program I tried ended up with the same audio problem. I concluded that it is something strange in the way the Kodak cameras store the MOV files.
Strangely enough, I noticed that the QuickTime player didn’t distort the audio like this. The audio sounds just fine through QuickTime. More on this shortly.
The second, more serious problem is that RADtools could not properly convert some of the video clips at all. (This problem only affected less than 10% of the clips I originally filmed, but most of those clips were very short—less than 20 seconds. It seems that the probability of this problem gets worse, the longer the clip.) RADtools would misreport the number of frames in the clip, and would stretch out a small number of frames of video (in slow motion) to match the length of the audio.
Again, I confirmed that this is a property of some of the MOV files stored by the camera. Other conversion tools also had problems with the same MOV clips.
After more angst, I found a number of websites in which frustrated owners of these Kodak cameras have reported the exact same problems.
It was only then that I discovered that QuickTime itself can convert MOV files to AVI. Believe it or not, it’s built into the QuickTime Player that Kodak supplies, or that you can download free from apple.com. The problem is that you can’t use it unless you pay Apple to upgrade to QuickTime Pro.
After realising that this would probably be the only way to get decent audio for these clips, I paid the AU$59 to Apple Australia to get the licence key that enables the extra “Pro” menu options in QuickTime.
Sure enough, you can “Export” any MOV file to a number of formats, including AVI. And guess what? The audio comes out fine!
So, the first piece of advice I can give is: pay Apple the US$29 (or whatever amount it is in your country) to upgrade QuickTime to QuickTime Pro.
From here, however, there are still a few snags to untangle.
The first is that the default settings for Exporting to AVI don’t give a great result. It defaults to the Cinepak codec, medium quality. This looks terrible compared to the original QuickTime movie. Even on maximum quality, that codec just doesn’t give good results.
I finally found that the best option is to use the Intel Indeo Video 4.4 codec, set on maximum quality. This creates AVI files that are 10 to 20 times larger than the original MOV files, but the quality is there. If (like me) you only want the AVI files so you can dump them into your Video-CD program, then you want to keep the quality as high as possible in this first step. The extra hard disk space is not really a concern. When your VCD program converts the AVI files to MPEG, it will compress them to the usual VCD size.
Now for the biggest snag: those problem MOV files are still a problem, even for QuickTime Pro. Unbelievably, these Kodak cameras are spitting out MOV files which have some sort of technical flaw in their data specifications. QuickTime is able to play them back fine—and that seems to be all that the Kodak engineers really checked. However, if QuickTime Pro tries to export them, then when the progress bar gets to the end, it never finishes. It just keeps going. If you check the output folder with Explorer, and keep hitting F5 to update the file listing, you can see the file getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger. It never stops.
That this happens even for QuickTime itself (the native format for these files) confirms that the problem is with the software built into these Kodak cameras. It would be nice it they issued a patch or a fix. I couldn’t find one.
Fortunately, there is a “workaround” for this problem. I found it when trolling the net trying to find solutions to all these problems. The workaround is to use QuickTime Pro’s cut and paste facility. Open the problem MOV file, then press Ctrl-A (the standard key combination for “select all”—in this case it selects the entire film clip, as you can see by the grey selection of frames at the bottom of the player). Then hit Ctrl-C (i.e. copy, which in this case copies all the frames, but not the incorrect data structure in the original MOV file). Now hit Ctrl-N (i.e. new, in this case a new MOV file or player). In this new player, press Ctrl-V (i.e. paste). Now you have a new version of the MOV file with the bad data structure exorcised. You can save this under a new name, but make sure you specify “Make movie self-contained”—otherwise, it will simply be a link to the original (bad) MOV file, which you are probably going to delete once you save the exorcised version. (You also cannot overwrite the original file, because it needs to access that to make the “self-contained” movie. You need to give it a slightly different name, save it “self-contained”, then delete the original and rename the new copy back to what you wanted it to be. A pain, I agree, but at least the **** thing works—finally!)
The exorcised MOV file can now be used to Export to AVI format. (I also keep all the MOV files on a separate CD, in case I want to reconvert them to a different format in the future. I figure it’s better keeping the exorcised ones than the haunted ones.)
So I hope that all this answers a few of your questions. No, you weren’t being incredibly stupid.

I'm sorry, I have to convert the mov file. for use with fce and / or imovie11, better ProRes422 or intermediate codec?

I'm sorry, I have to convert the mov file. for use with fce and / or imovie11, better ProRes422 or intermediate codec?

FCE only used AIC for HD.
Al

How do you convert .AVI files for using in iMovie without losing the original clip time and date

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paul

Hi everyone! does anyone know how to convert .AVI files for using in iMovie without losing the original clip time and date? Handbrake, MPEG Streamclip and Evon all replace the original timecode with the date of modification. This is very frustrating when you are trying to keep the chronology right. I know that if you upload the files to iMovie from one device the chronology isn't a problem, but I'm adding video files from a couple of iPhones and a couple of camcorders. any help much appeciated.
paul

Converting VOB Files For use in FCP

Hello,
I have a large FCP project using VOB files shot on a DVD Recorder.
I have been been using a freeware called MPEG Streamclip to convert them into Quicktime Files for use with FCP7. The resulting QT files have all been very choppy when used in the FCP Timeline etc.
I have options with this freeware to convert to MPEG, TS or export to Quicktime, DV, AVI, MPEG4 or other formats.
Any suggestions on how to bring these VOB files into Final Cut Pro so that they work well.
Thanks,
Marc

Nick's tutorial is good. Read it.
I had been using Cinematize for this but would always have trouble with the aspect ratio.
With MPEG Streamclip I have no problems if I do it this way:
Export to QuickTime
Change Compression to: Apple DV/DVCPro-NTSC
Quality: 100%
Frame Size: 720x480 (DV-NTSC)
Sound: Uncompressed (the default)
Make Movie
I do a preset of the above.
Now, when you take that resultant file into FCP:
In FCP make sure your sequence set-up is DV anamorphic (if footage is anamorphic/16:9). When you bring that file into FCP it will not be flagged as anamorphic. In the browser scroll over and check mark it as anamorphic. NOW drag into the timeline. Aspect ratio is good if you do it this way.
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Converting wmv files for use in imovie 9 for users who have pc

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I don't want to use DV because these .m2t files are from an HDV camcorder and I want to preserve the aspect ratio and resolution in the files. What other "flavor" of HD would you suggest that I convert them to since (a) I can't bring the files into FCP6 or Compressor (b) I don't see any other flavors of HD to use in VisualHub.
The whole business of converting .m2t files to a FCP6 compatible format, i.e. a Quicktime format, would seem to be one that is commonly encountered, and yet I have never found a thread on this forum that really answers this question: What is the best workflow for converting .m2t files for use in FCP? Surely, one of the pros who frequent this forum must have dealt with this issue and have an answer.
I don't want to have to recapture the files from tape all over again just to use them in FCP6.
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Convert vob files for use in FCP X

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In another thread on this site I read something about MPEG Streamclip, & something about needing to separately download an MPG2 converter for it w/ Lion or Mountain Lion - the process sounded confusing and I couldn't tell if it applied to my situation or not...
Thanks in advance for any light anyone can shed.

Midnighttrain wrote:
… MPEG Streamclip, & something about needing to separately download an MPG2 converter for it w/ Lion or Mountain Lion - the process sounded confusing …
MpegStremclip is THE Swiss Army Knife, when it comes to conversion, a 100% reliable, it IS absolutely free (any download a dollar = Stefano would be a millionaire!), I dare to say it is THE most recommended 3d party tool in the editor community ....
How & why you need to install the mp2 plug-in does Signore Cinque explain in simple words on his website:
http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html

How do I export v-card formatted files for use with either Numbers or Excel?

How do I export v-card formatted files for use with either Numbers or Excel?

Did you open Automator and just look around?
Actions are listed in the left pane.
You drag them into the workflow on the right in the order you need to process the items that you want.
If this is a on-off requirement, just make a Workflow. If you plan to use it often, make it an Application.
If you want to select the contacts you want to export, use a get Selected action. You'd then select the contacts in Contacts App before running the workflow.
I'm not on a Mac to take screenshots, so you'll have to look at Automator's help or google for more info.

How do I convert Word 2004 files for use with Mavericks?

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Helen M. K. wrote:
I am still using Office 2008! (I know I should have upgraded but haven't yet.)
Office 2008 should function in Mavericks and it willl open Office 2004 files:
http://roaringapps.com/app/microsoft-office-2008
Hence, you do not need to partition and install Snow Leopard into a new partition. I gave you my previous advice before you indicated you are now using Office 2008.
Helen M. K. wrote:
I am still using Office 2008! (I know I should have upgraded but haven't yet.)

How to convert .MP3 files into .AAC with iTunes 10.5.2

Im running a Mac OS X 10.5.8, and my iTunes version is 10.5.2.
I want to convert .MP3 files into .AAC using iTunes, but no option is given for me. What should I do?

im not going to change all my songs into AAC, I was experiementing around with making ringtones for my iphone. I can open a song in Garageband, and export it as an AAC file to my itunes, but it is very annoying. I remember older versions of itunes having a "Convert to AAC" option, but i can't find it anymore on this current version of itunes.
Basically, I want to convert a couple songs into AAC to create ringtones out of them.

Ripping Cd's for use with iTunes AND DJ Software

Hello, I have a lot of CD's I want to rip into my MAC. I want to store them on my external hard drive attached to my Time Capsule. I use iTunes, but here is the problem. I also use my MB Pro to DJ, and disconnect my external hard drive from the Time Capsule and take it with me (it has my music on it). How can I use both iTunes and my DJ software? Does iTunes rip the songs into a file that I can also use without iTunes playing it (in other words, a plain old mp3 or mp4?) Anyone have a best practices to pass along? Thanks!

Welcome to the forums DJEJay
in other words, a plain old mp3 or mp4?
Yes, in your Preferences > Importing, choose whichever format you want the music to be in - e.g. MP3 if you prefer - plus the bitrate you want it at. (This also works for converting tracks you already have in your iTunes Library - from the ADvanced menu).
Does iTunes rip the songs into a file that I can also use without iTunes playing it
Yes - all the tracks will be in the iTunes > Tunes Music folder on the drive (making sure you point iTunes to this drive the first time you run it), organised in separate folders by artist albums or Compilations. These all play in Finder Preview, and I assume can be read by your DJ software / hardware.
One word of warning - don't interfere with the folder structure or move files around or rename them or anything, as iTunes might get very confused next time you launch it.

Converting WMA files for use in Logic

How do convert .wma files recorded on an Olympus Voice recorder for use in Logic? I can play the files with Flip4 Mac but Logic does not recognise them when you try to import?
Cheers
MS

You're welcome.
I forgot to mention there's another good utility [All2MP3|http://download.cnet.com/All2MP3/3000-2140_4-190407.html] which is free, but only converts to mp3.

Converting .avi files for use on ipad without using a laptop

Hi, I have a head cam (for use on the slopes and on my bike) that records .avi files to an sd card. I was wanting to know before I buy the sd connector for the ipad if there is any easy way (I appreciate that there are some complicated ways) to convert then edit the video with a movie editor. I was thinking about buying iMovie but I understand it doesn't recognise .avi files so would need to convert them beforehand - I don't intend to take my laptop though so need to do it all on the ipad - qu therefore is can it be done, in a simple straightforward way, with full knowledge that I am not a techie ?

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http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/consumerelectronics/ipodfaq/ipod-supported-music-formats-good-sound-quality.html

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Roxio Toast is your best option IMO but if you want to stay within the iApps then you'll first have to add the avi files to iMovie => iDvd. That or use a third part app likeMpegStreamclip (free download):
I suggest you do not exceed 120 mins playback for SL Dvd-R
Hope this helps but if not just come on back.
Message was edited by: SDMacuser

How do I export Premier Pro CS6 files for use with Final Cut Pro?

In my cloud version of CS-6, I am trying to export or convert my finished work and take to my
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Any ideas?
Thanks!

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Converting m4a files for use with itunes

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