Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen | solitude.dk

One really annoying thing with using digital still cameras for videoblogging is that Windows Movie Maker can't open the source footage. Most cameras record in MPEG-4 format (an .MP4 or .MOV file) and Movie Maker can only work with files that Windows Media Player can open. My solution has been to use Quicktime Pro for my basic editing. If I needed more I have been using Quicktime Pro to convert my source footage to uncompressed AVI that I could open in my editing software. This took up a lot of space on my computer and it took forever to convert the video clips back and forth.

The solution is called mp4cam2avi (thanks, Jon!). This program will convert MPEG-4 files to AVI files that Movie Maker can open. It can do batch operations and it doesn't re-encode the videos — I just used it to convert a dozen or so short videos in less than 30 seconds. Now I can run the videos from my Kodak Easyshare camera through mp4cam2avi and start editing in Movie Maker right away. It is an absolute life saver.