Please help me with video conversion!

[lektrix]

I'm trying to piece together a few video clips for a personal video for my friends. Everyone submitted their own video clips so I have to work with different file formats - MP4, WMV, MOV, and AVI files. It's a big mess because some were recorded in HD720, others 640x480. Combined, there is around 2GB worth if clips. In the end, I want the final product to be in HD720. What would be the best program to convert these files? So far I've been playing around with Pazera Free MP4 to AVI Converter 1.6, but I have no clue what settings to use.

i.e. What output bitrate (kbits/s) should I use? How much FPS?

I can't sacrifice too much quality but I do want to cut down on space if possible....

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Another question - after converting all the files to AVI, which would be the best FREE video converter to use? I have no choice but to use Windows Movie Maker right now.

 

[bruceb]

Try Super .. it is free and works well

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

 

[Gooberlx2]

Could use something like windows movie maker to piece things together. 30fps is the ntsc standard you'll see on TVs in the US. 24fps is the standard for movies.

If you're running Windows 7, I recommend installing Movie Maker 6 from Vista, over Windows Live Movie Maker.

 

[lektrix]

If I recorded something at HD720 and I want the final file to be HD720, is there anything I can do to reduce the file size without sacrificing too much quality?? In other words, should I bother compressing?

 

[Phynaz]

Don't convert and then edit, you'll be doing two transcodes - bad news for quality.

Edit first, then use the editor to do the final rendering.

 

[lektrix]

Don't convert and then edit, you'll be doing two transcodes - bad news for quality.

Edit first, then use the editor to do the final rendering.

So you are saying I should piece together the video clips, compile the final video, then convert??? WMM from XP will not import MP4s so I have to convert MP4s to WMV first. Ughhh!!

 

[thewhat]

Xmedia Recode is one of the best free video converters, IMO:
http://www.xmedia-recode.de/download.html

Another good one is Avidemux.

For video editing,.. I don't know about freeware, but if you're willing to look at "pro" stuff then Sony Vegas is good.

 

[Modelworks]

The very first thing you should do in a situation like this is convert everything to a lossless editing codec. Very few codec work well with editing, they were not designed for it, and editing software will often crash if you try to edit video encoded with certain codec. After you have it all in the editing codec format then you can use any software you like, just about any of them will work great on the raw video . Then compress the final video into your target format.

A good free lossless codec designed for editing is lagarith. It works well in programs like premiere and most of the free stuff without crashing the application.
http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html