Thread: AVI Codecs

Dear all,

I have about 2 hours of short MOV clips from my Kodak DX7440 which I want to join together and edit using Pinnacle Studio Studio 9.4.5 SE, then I want to burn the end product onto a DVD which will play on a stand alone DVD player. Pinnacle doesn’t recognise MOV files so the first thing is to convert my files to AVI. RAD Video tools asks me to choose one of the following AVI codecs:


Cinepak codec by Radius
Intel Indeo Video R3.2
Intel Indeo Video 4.5
Intel IYUV codec
Microsoft Video 1
Indeo Video 5.10
PICVideo MJPEG codec
Microsoft MPEG4 Video Codec
Microsoft MPEG 4 Video Codec
Main Concept DV Codec 2.0.4
XviD Codec MPEG4
DivX 5.0.5


I am confused cos I thought that AVI and MPEG were two different things, so why do three of the above AVI codecs have MPEG 4 in their name?? If these are MPEG 4 codecs rather then AVI then perhaps I should avoid them cos I heard that Pinnacle doesn’t like MPEG 4.

Anyway any comments on which of these codecs I should or shouldn’t use? What I want from the codec is to be generally compatible and user friendly so I can share the AVI files with other PC’s; and to work ok in Pinnacle and of course to be good quality (I’m not too bothered about the file size). Or should I use uncompressed AVI files in Pinnacle which Pinnacle will then compress when it converts to MPEG2 in the rendering process?

Thanx

Not all avi codecs work equally well. MPEG4 is something like DivX. To rdit in Studio, we usually use DV-Avi. But PICVideo MJPEG codec could be a good choice in your case.

DivX is a type of MPEG-4 codec.
Working with MPEG-4 files is not enabled in the standard version of Pinnacle Studio, but can be unlocked.

Among the options you've got there, PICVideo sounds the best option for transcoding. Although, if you only want to join those files to produce a DVD, without editing them, turn them directly in to MPEG.

I agree that if you are not going to edit your video, MPEG2 is a good option as well.