Can someone advise me on software to convert 7D MOV video files to AVI & good editing

[Jeff Wisener]

Guys, I am new to the video game & purchased a Canon 7D camera. I tried to play the video file on VLC, GOM, & WMP & found out Canon saves these video files as MOV thus I got to convert them to AVI or another format:

Here are my questions:

1. Is AVI a good file to conver to for playback & editing? If yes, please advise on software you suggest to do so. Of course price matters so keep that in mind all though I dont want to be penny wise & pound foolish.

2. What is easy to use & productive editing software to edit these videos in. I would like to be able to edit & make transitions etc of audio & video & burn to DVD. Cost & ease of use matters but I also want something I can grow into as well.

Thanks!

[Chris Barcellos]

Cineform NeoScene at Cineform.com

[Chad Jones]

Jeff,

I concur with Chris. NeoScene is a terrific way to convert your .MOV files into an easy to edit .AVI

I just bought a 7D as well, tested it out last night using NeoScene to convert - it worked beautifully.

As for editing software - I assume you're on a Windows system. I would have to recommend Adobe Premier CS4.

[Jeff Wisener]

Thanks guys above that posted. I will look into these & of course will consider ofther posts to follow.

BTW, I found this link that ranks tham below. I am not sure how good their rankings are but thought it added to the thread.

http://video-editing-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

[Jeff Wisener]

Guys, I quickly looked at the NeoScene & got a question; is it only used to convert MOV to AVI or does it do editing as well? In otherwords is it the only editing software I need?

I noticed it refered to as being campatable with Adobe: Premiere Elements or Premiere Pro. Does that mean you need to use Premiere do do the editing?

[Kirk Graham]

final cut studio 2 just drop the .mov files in and your editing.

[Chad Jones]

NeoScene is for converting files only. You'll need a separate editing application.

[Barry Green]

Are you sure you need to convert the files? Vegas, Premiere Pro CS4.1, and EDIUS all support editing the Canon 7D files as-is.

[Jeff Wisener]

Originally Posted by Barry Green

Are you sure you need to convert the files? Vegas, Premiere Pro CS4.1, and EDIUS all support editing the Canon 7D files as-is.

Hmm, well I would like to play them on media players as well as burn to DVD. To my knowledge WMP, GOM, LVC dont want to play MOV files & when I play it in quicktime it jerks around/not smooth.

[Peter Burke]

Originally Posted by Jeff Wisener

Guys, I am new to the video game & purchased a Canon 7D camera. I tried to play the video file on VLC, GOM, & WMP & found out Canon saves these video files as MOV thus I got to convert them to AVI or another format:

Here are my questions:

1. Is AVI a good file to conver to for playback & editing? If yes, please advise on software you suggest to do so. Of course price matters so keep that in mind all though I dont want to be penny wise & pound foolish.

2. What is easy to use & productive editing software to edit these videos in. I would like to be able to edit & make transitions etc of audio & video & burn to DVD. Cost & ease of use matters but I also want something I can grow into as well.

Thanks!

AVI = Audio Video Interleave
WIKI link: Audio Video Interleave - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Truth is, AVI could be one of 20 old school formats, and is definitely not up to par with modern codecs like the H264 MP4 that comes out of the 7D, let alone the DVD format mpeg2.

I highly recommend you avoid "AVI".

Every time you transcode to a different format, you loose quality (spectacular loss if you choose AVI).

I recommend you choose a mainstream video non-linear editor (NLE). Archive your originals in a logical manner on a nice big drive and do not move these files again.
Produce your masterpiece and save the 'project file'.

Want to make a DVD ? Open your project, save as xxxxDVD.yy and use the DVD menu wizard, save. Then, you can render & create the DVD file stucture.
Or, Open the original project and render as DVD compliant files without creating the DVD menu as yet. Any decent DVD creater software will not re-render DVD compliant Mpeg2 files when you create the DVD at a later date.

Blu-ray ? - Same process as DVD.

My strong recommendation: Do not rerender files in intermediate steps - every render (transcode) looses quality.

BTW, VLC, KMPLAYER and GOM all play 40Mb/s H264 files on my lowly 2year old core2duo laptop, but not always smoothly in the full window - ie, if you playback stutters, reduce the playback window size slightly. I would expect current model laptops to not have any issues here.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Peter Burke

Truth is, AVI could be one of 20 old school formats, and is definitely not up to par with modern codecs like the H264 MP4 that comes out of the 7D, let alone the DVD format mpeg2.

Absolute rubbish. AVI is simply a container that can contain any number of codecs, INCLUDING H.264. There are a number of AVI based codecs that are excellent. I will concede that the .mov container has several more modern codecs available but they can present some problems when used on a PC.

Originally Posted by Peter Burke

I highly recommend you avoid "AVI".

I highly recommend he investigate his options and choose what works best for him. Especially since the AVI container is native to his operating system where .mov is not.

Originally Posted by Peter Burke

Every time you transcode to a different format, you loose quality (spectacular loss if you choose AVI).

Rubbish again. There are numerous lossless codecs out there, including the absolutely lossless Lagarith and HuffYUV codecs inside the AVI container.

Originally Posted by Peter Burke

I recommend you choose a mainstream video non-linear editor (NLE). Archive your originals in a logical manner on a nice big drive and do not move these files again.
Produce your masterpiece and save the 'project file'.

Sound advice here, though I don't subscribe to using hard drives for archiving.

Originally Posted by Peter Burke

Want to make a DVD ? Open your project, save as xxxxDVD.yy and use the DVD menu wizard, save. Then, you can render & create the DVD file stucture.
Or, Open the original project and render as DVD compliant files without creating the DVD menu as yet. Any decent DVD creater software will not re-render DVD compliant Mpeg2 files when you create the DVD at a later date.

What the heck are you talking about? The advice to create an Mpeg2 DVD compliant video file is sound (he needs to create an LPCM or ac3 audio file to go with it though) but I have no idea what your first point was.

Originally Posted by Peter Burke

Blu-ray ? - Same process as DVD.

Well, not exactly. Different codec options, different bit rate options, different menu options, etc.

Originally Posted by Peter Burke

My strong recommendation: Do not rerender files in intermediate steps - every render (transcode) looses quality.

Already covered this fallacy.

[Chris Barcellos]

Originally Posted by Barry Green

Are you sure you need to convert the files? Vegas, Premiere Pro CS4.1, and EDIUS all support editing the Canon 7D files as-is.

As far as Vegas is concerned, you can edit native too. That was not the question raised here. I convert to the Cineform codec because it presents an easier editting process for me, and is better suited to color correction and multiple rendering processes. That is from my experience with the codec over about 2.5 years now. It also puts less load on the processor during editing, and play back. With my set up, at least, which is a pretty basic Core 2 Quad from Dell, I can get acceptable playback in the preview window without filters, a full "best" setting, and in Preview setting when filtered. Editing in native I might be lucky to see 10 frames a second on the preview.

[Hale Nanthan]

<p>You won't want to edit with Native Canon EOS 7D MOV files, most CPU's bottleneck when scrubbing through these files on a timeline. It's very CPU intensive and not really meant for editing.</p>

<a href="You won't want to edit with Native Canon EOS 7D MOV files, most CPU's bottleneck when scrubbing through these files on a timeline. It's very CPU intensive and not really meant for editing.">How to convert mov files with canon eos mov converter</a>

[Hale Nanthan]

You won't want to edit with Native Canon EOS 7D MOV files, most CPU's bottleneck when scrubbing through these files on a timeline. It's very CPU intensive and not really meant for editing.

[Colin Rowe]

A very important benefit of using Neoscene is that it automatically performs the Luma range and Colour space correction on 7d / 550D and 5d MkII clips. this saves an awful lot of time messing about with curves in your NLE