Check out the latest tutorial: How To Edit GoPro HD Videos - A Complete Workflow - Update July 2011
| This cycling and climbing clip was edited after I converted the MP4 videos to AVI format. GoPro HD footage comes in MP4 files which you may need to convert to AVI, MOV, QuickTime, DV or other formats before importing them into your current video editor. |
By the end of this post you will be able to batch convert MP4 clips to AVI using a free MP4 converter.
What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Working with AVI Files Instead of MP4 Files?
- Perhaps the AVI video format is the easiest to handle for any video editor. I don't think there are any video editors - even default ones like Windows Movie Maker or free software on the web - that don't import AVI files.
- AVI video is uncompressed and thus the quality is maximum. Video cameras (compact photo cameras as well) that output the clips in AVI do so without working too much on the footage (with their internal software). GoPro HD camera for instance does some serious work compressing the video to MP4 format in H.264 encoding - this is keeps the quality high and at the same time keeps the files small.
- Maybe it's just me but I find that AVI video is slightly sharper than other formats. The shapes seem to be better defined. And if you are shooting with long depth of field (DOF), which most point-and-shoot cameras have as default feature with their lens system, this means that the objects in the background will also look pretty good.
- The biggest disadvantage of AVI movies is that they are too large, in terms of megabytes or space occupied on your hard drive. That's why for serious video editing you need tons of storage space (fast transfer hard drives starting from at least 500 GB), not to mention tons of computing power (powerful processor, lots of RAM memory and a solid graphics card). To have a sense of the size difference between the two types of files I can tell you that an AVI clip is 5.31 times larger than a MP4 clip. For instance a clip shot in 720p (lowest resolution considered to be HD) at 30 fps in MP4 occupies 45,258 kilobytes (45.2 MB) whereas the same clip converted to AVI occupies 240,340 kilobytes (240.3 MB). That's a huge difference!
How To Batch Convert MP4 To AVI with Free Video Converter - MPEG Streamclip
First of all I demand that you go right now and thank Stefano Cinque, the Italian developer behind Squared5, for his majestic work with MPEG Streamclip. Please do that! This is a world class program that he's giving away for free. We owe him that much!
I showed this software to a TV editor and he was amazed by its capabilities. His licensed software didn't even open my GoPro HD clips... Can you image how smart and knowledgeable I looked in his eyes? :-)
After you download and install the video software, start the program and go on like this:
- Click on the List item from the the menu bar and then click on Batch List (Ctrl+B)
- In the new window that pops click the Add Files... button
- Browse your computer in order to reach the folder where you store the files that you want to convert. You can select multiple files either by holding down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and clicking on each file that you want to add to the batch list or by holding down the left mouse button and selecting mini batches of files (when the files are selected release the mouse button). Click on the Open button of the window and then you will be asked to
- Choose a task - choose Export to AVI - if that's what you want to do with your video files; if not then choose other video format from the list. Click OK.
- Select the destination folder of the files to be converted or simply create a new folder.
- Choose the export settings for your video. The only thing I do here is I slide the quality level to 100% (the default setting is 50%). I leave the resolution and frame rate as in the original clip. Click To Batch button.
- In the new window click the Go button. The status of the files will transform from Waiting to Processing... and eventually to Completed.
| You can also edit GoPro HD footage with Magix Edit Pro 15 which is unfortunately not free. It allows you to directly import and edit the MP4 videos without having to convert them. This saves time and energy. Go for the free trial and see how it goes. |
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