.avi movies have no sound

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Level 1

9 points

.avi movies have no sound

I have a Kodak camera which saves movies to my SD card in .avi format. For some reason, when I view any .avi files on my Windows PC, it causes Windows Explorer to crash. (That's not my question, but if anybody knows why this is, let me know.) However, I can convert them on my Windows PC using DIVX Converter and then bring them over to my Macbook and everything is fine. However, if I plug in the camera to my Macbook via USB and just copy over the .avi files, I never have sound. If I play the .avi files alone, no sound. If I use DIVX Converter on my Macbook, still no sound. If I import the .avi files into iMovie HD, no sound. If I import the converted DIVX files into iMovie HD, still no sound.

The only way I can get the sound is if I convert them on my Windows PC and bring them over to the Macbook once all that is done.

I'm ditching my Windows PC in favor of the Macbook as soon as I can get someone to buy it, so I need to know how to make this work before I get rid of the Windows PC. Can anyone help?

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Mar 21, 2008 1:38 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 21, 2008 2:03 PM in response to spunkytofu

some camera-made avi movies have a special audio codec, which quicktime is not equipped to handle. iMovie HD and most other Apple programs use quicktime to decode the input files, so none of those will work.

You can try playing the file in VLC, which doesn't rely on quicktime. There are only few proprietary codecs that VLC cannot decode. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Or try converting your file into ipod compatible .mp4 format with iSquint, as it doesn't rely on quicktime either. http://www.isquint.org/

Both are available free online.

You can also convert using ffmpegX, but that is a complicated process.

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Answer 2

spunkytofu Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 21, 2008 2:11 PM in response to Yongwon Lee

Well, I don't really care what format they end up in, because I'm just going to import them into iMovie and then burn those in whatever format I want. I just need a way to make sure I save the audio. When I use DIVX Converter, the video quality is still great and all, but it doesn't keep the sound unless I do it on my PC. Why does it work on my PC and not my Mac?

So would the best method be to use VLC? It looks like that just plays them, does that convert them as well?

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Answer 3

Mar 21, 2008 8:00 PM in response to spunkytofu

Have you tried to play any other .AVI files on the mac?? Do they have any sound to them if you do? I would bet that there is a codec problem which is why you do not have any sound. The DIVX codec is pretty good at taking care of this problem but does not always do the trick. A lot of people seem to recommend using perian instead. You can download it at http://perian.org/ and see if that takes care of your problem. Just offhand use perian and have not found too many video files that it does not play perfectly, the ones that do have problems are typically those that I have messed up the original encoding on myself.

Luck
E

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Answer 4

Mar 21, 2008 11:17 PM in response to spunkytofu

it's because even with divx importer, you don't have the same audio codecs in OSX as you do in Windows.

VLC is a player only, although it does have some advanced saving/streaming functions you can fiddle with.

If your final goal is to import your video and audio into iMovie, you can try various quicktime plugins. Perian is one of them. Once the file plays correctly in quicktime, it will import correctly in iMovie.

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Answer 5

spunkytofu Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 25, 2008 1:01 AM in response to Evan Garner

That worked great! Thanks!

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