HD video conversion help PLEASE!!

[Welrod50]

All, I have something of a dilemma which, although clearly not the end of the world, is causing me some consternation and I wonder if anyone has any ideas please!!??

OK, I currently image the moon and planets (well Jupiter up til now, but Saturn is in my sights) with Pentax Kx video, which captures motion jpg (i think) but writes the files as AVI's which are easy to sort out.

However, a few nights ago I decided to have a mess about with my Panasonic TZ8 compact which can record H.264 HD video and I held it to the EP for Jupiter for just a few moments but WOW - much sharper! I could forsee that using a refined version of this method could give me extra detail to work with that the Pentax AVI's weren't.

Lots of faffing about later with VirtualDub, Registax & Freemake Video Converter I came to the conclusion that for whatever reason, if I convert the HD footage to AVI, VirtualDub and Registax still will not read it?? I tried converting it to all sorts of different formats and nothing would read it (quicktime, windows vid player & iTunes vid player).

Does anyone know of a software I can use which will read and convert HD footage into an AVI type which VirtualDub and Registax will actually read??

Thank you all in advance!!

Scott

[Cath]

When you get VirtualDub to save the AVI file use Uncompressed format (no compression). If after that Registax still can't read the file then something else is wrong.

[Welrod50]

Cath, thanks for the reply - and good call as regards the compression !!.

Now, Virtual Dub wont even open the original file in the first place. They are HD video from the TZ8 and save as H.264 (MOV) output files. I have tonight downloaded AVS4U which will read and convert the .MOV file to an uncompressed AVI which VirtualDub likes Only downside is I will need to spend the best part of £50 to 'unlock' AVS4U and remove a watermark that it leaves across the middle of the converted vid.

Do you/anyone here know of a good FREE converter which I can download to convert the H264 MOV file to a readable AVI (uncompressed)??

Thanks all

[Guest]

Super is free but it is the interface from hell: http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

[Welrod50]

Thanks for that link. Ive just tried it and it seems great if you use Youtube. For what I need, I can't figure out how to work it, so Ive given up and uninstalled it

[Steve Ward]

Try PIPP ....... https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/

[cgarry]

Try PIPP ....... https://sites.google...site/astropipp/

Yes, PIPP is designed for exactly this type of conversion. It will also centre the planet and crop the video around it to a manageable size at the same time if you like.

Cheers,

Chris

[Schorhr]

After using Super for ages, I now use xmedia recode. Nice tool.

[Welrod50]

Cheers folks. In the end I downloaded PIPP and this works very well.