Convert QuickTime to AVI with RAD Video Tools
By: Geetesh Bajaj
Date Created: August 21st 2008
Last Updated: February 23rd 2009
There may be many times when you need to convert a QuickTime movie to another file format so that you can use it in on a PowerPoint slide or another program that doesn't work with the QuickTime format. In this tutorial, I'll show you how you can use RAD Video Tools, a free program to do the conversion from QuickTime to AVI files that are more PowerPoint friendly.
Here's what you need to get started:
- Before you begin, make sure you have QuickTime installed so that you have the required codecs available on your system -- you can get QuickTime from the Apple web site.
- And you'll also need to download and install RAD Video tools which you can download from here.
- You'll also need a sample QuickTime movie file to convert -- you can get many QuickTime sample files online, or you could use the sample file that is included within the QuickTime program folder.
Here's what you should know:
- QuickTime files normally have the MOV file extension although newer QuickTime files also use the MP4 file extension.
- AVI files are a standard video file format for Windows.
Follow these steps to do the conversion:
- Launch RAD Video Tools by choosing the Windows Start Menu -- you'll
find this option in All Programs | Bink and Smacker | RAD Video tools.
This will bring up a navigation dialog box -- navigate to the folder
that contains your QuickTime movie, select it and click the Convert
button (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Select a QuickTime file to convert
Note: You may not see the MOV file extension in the dialog box shown in Figure 1 by default -- to view file extensions, you can learn how to enable them here...
- This brings up the Bink Converter dialog box that you can see in Figure
2. It might be that AVI is already selected as the output format
here -- if it is not, just click the Output Type button to see the flyout
list that you can see in Figure 2 -- and then select
the AVI file option. Then click the Convert button (again see Figure
2).
Figure 2: Convert the video file format
- This should bring up two successive dialog boxes -- the top box lets
you choose the video codec (compressor) -- the codec options available
in this list depend upon which codecs are installed on your system -- Microsoft
Video 1 is a good choice though (see Figure 3). Click
OK.
Figure 3: Choose a codec
- This gets you to the Converter dialog box that shows the progress of
the actual conversion -- and once the conversion is done, it provides info
as you can see in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Conversion process
- Thereafter you can test the converted AVI file by playing it in a AVI playing application such as Windows Media Player.
Note: Once you have converted the file, do experiment with codecs other than Microsoft Video 1 to study how large the output files are -- and how good the converted quality is.
