Need a *good* software for converting MP4 to AVI ..

[ahmadka]

Hi all ... Well I have all these camera recorded MP4 video files which I'd like to re-encode into XviD AVI format ... I normally use VirtualDub for all video related procedures but VirtualDub doesn't by default support MP4's (I know there are workarounds but they dont product good results for me) ..

So I have tried a few small 'format conversion' program for converting MP4 to AVI, but they all give choppy/blocky AVI videos .. The results videos have parts in them which remain 'constant' for 2-3 seconds and then suddenly change (going from one keyframe to another directly) ..

I need a tool/program (free or otherwise) which can give good outputs and supports batch conversion (since I have a lot of MP4s and would like to run the same job on all videos) ..

Any recommendations ?

[MilesAhead]

I haven't tried this one, but it may have batch support:

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MP4Cam2AVI#features

For .mp4 to .avi I've been using Quick AVI Creator. If you look at the command lines it makes for xvid_encraw then the toughest part would probably be handling the audio demux, processing if needed, then remux. The video conversion to .avi with xvid_encraw is the easy part. But it produces good results in one pass if you give it some bits to work with. xvid_encraw you only need to know a few command line params to get good output. It doesn't require 20 settings for the output to be playable.

The trouble with trying to automate Quick AVI Creator is it demuxes the audio, processes it, then writes an .avs script which it pops up in AvsP so you can modify the script. It requires a lot of manual intervention esp. since the default bit rate it puts in is way too low. But you may learn enough from looking at the .avs and batch scripts to figure out how to automate using the command line tools.

I haven't done much with .mp4. Hopefully others will have better suggestions.