AVI vs MotionJPEG format

[pb940072]

I am just begining astrophotography (photographing through a telescope). This is possible with todays consumer digital cameras, and various programs out there make video clips taken with digital cameras advantageous, especially for photographing planets.
One such program is called Astrostack (freeware), and requires the video file to be an .avi format. My Olympus digital camera, a Camedia 3040, does take video clips, but saves them in a Quicktime motion JPEG format.

When I use Win 98, and 'right click' on an .avi file, it shows information such as number of frames and compression (in .avi case, no compression appears). When I 'right click' on a video file from my Camedia 3040, it tells the number of frames, but states that compression is unknown.

My Question:
What is the difference from an .avi file and a MotionJPEG file, and can I convert my MotionJPEG video files into .avi digital video files? If so, how? And... are there freeware programs for this?

Any help/thoughts are appreciated!

Thanks,

Paul B.

[setarip]

"can I convert my MotionJPEG video files into .avi digital video files? If so, how?"

You should be able to accomplish this with either TMPGEnc or VirtualDub...

[pb940072]

Thanks...

Paul

[setarip]

My pleasure ;>}

[weezul]

not mayt people know this but u can easily convert MOV/Quicktime to AVi, using a program called RAD Video Tools. get it from www.radgametools.com i used it for my THPS2 game, and it has convert button on it and u can convert MOV or a load of other formats to AVI. its ace

[pb940072]

Thanks for the information regarding the RAD video site, Weezul.

Paul