QT Pro, worth it?

I am having trouble with iMovie&my digital camera. My camera imports videos as .avi files. I have tried changing this but I can't anywhere. iMovie doesn't accept .avi files (however on certain occasions it works no problem, strange). Anyway, I have heard QTPro will allow me to convert the files-- It if worth the thirty for me if this is the case but can anyone answer my question: Will I be able to convert my .avi files to .mpeg/.mov files to suit iMovie?

Will I be able to convert my .avi files to .mpeg/.mov files to suit iMovie?
If you can read/play an .avi movie correctly with the QT Player then you should be able to convert it to another QT compatible format using the Pro authorization. Your primary problem is that .avi (like .mov) is a file format which can contian many combinations of different audio/video compression formats. In a nutshell, QT is "frame-to-frame synchronized" media player. Unfortunately, .avi frequently employs "muxed" audio and video which utilize sequential blocks of audio data interspersed with blocks of video data to maintain synchronization and/or proprietary compression formats not available for free use in the QT Tools package. Such formats require a third-party component be installed in QT to assist in the play and/or conversion of these compressed formats. Player components are freqently free. However, there is a growing trend for the conversion codecs to be marketed commercially -- i.e., they are no loner being distributed free. As Ryan mentioned, since there are so many .avi compression formats being used out there, it may be necessary to install quite a number of components to "cover" them all. My recommendation would be to install some of the most common free components (DivX, 3ivX, Flip4Mac, etc) and see which are able to play the particular formats which are giving you problems. If one allows you to properly play your files, then you might want to consider the purcharse of the associated bi-directional codec if required. (I.e., DivX v6 player is free but full codec must be purchased whereas the free DivX v5.1.1 is bi-directional and can handle mp3/layer-3 audio clips if that happens to be your particular "problem" format.

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alphaace wrote:
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Message was edited by: cornelius

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