User profile for user: KLC3751
KLC3751 Author
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Editing avi files on new M1 Air

I got a new M1 MacBook Air about three weeks ago. I’ve been a Windows user for 30 years but since I already had an iPhone and iPad that I would get a Mac to go along with them. I love pretty much everything about the air but as always, little things keep cropping up that I didn’t expect.


I have about 1.8 TB of family videos. Some of them are my father’s 8 mm film conversions that were put on mini DV tapes, others are 8mm analog tapes that were digitized and the rest are mini DV tapes, all imported into my windows PC. All of the video files show a file extension of AVI. I have all of them on an external hard drive that is now attached to my MacBook.


Now I discover that my MacBook won’t play these files. So I’m trying to figure out what to do exactly. I’ve spent many afternoons searching these forums and on the Internet trying to figure out what to do. All of my searches here seem to turn up threads that are 10, 12 and even 15 years old. Most of my Internet searches only turn up dubious websites that are trying to sell something. And the terminologies and technology variations for video are frankly dizzying.


I’m not interested in the smallest file sizes but I would like to preserve quality. I’m not interested in burning DVDs, but I would like to do simple editing like cut, splice and combine some of the clips into more manageable files that I can share with family. It looks like I can use iMovie to do all of that, but first I have to make these AVI files readable for iMovie.


I don’t know even where to begin so I am creating this thread. There seem to be dozens of converters out there and very little information about them. Are they all pretty much the same or are these programs something I should be careful installing on my laptop? Or can I get a more robust program for editing that will allow me to read these files as they are? Would Final Cut Pro do that?


any help or direction would really be appreciated.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.2

Posted on Feb 4, 2021 5:42 PM

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User profile for user: Rich839
Rich839
User level: Level 8
48,476 points

Posted on Feb 4, 2021 6:27 PM

Convert your .avi clips to h.264, Mp4/AAC with the free download, Handbrake.


You can get Handbrake here:


https://handbrake.fr/


A simple way to do it is to open Handbrake and do a File/Open Source.

Navigate to your video and choose it as the source from the resulting screen.

Then do File/Start Encoding. Wait a couple of minutes for the conversion to

complete. Then save and import the converted clip into iMovie.


If you want to preserve the .avi format of your original clips you can make duplicates

of them and then convert the duplicates in Handbrake. Probably safest to work with

duplicates in any case, in case something goes wrong with the conversion process, or

you want to do something different with the originals.


-- Rich

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User profile for user: Rich839
Rich839
User level: Level 8
48,476 points

Feb 4, 2021 6:27 PM in response to KLC3751

Convert your .avi clips to h.264, Mp4/AAC with the free download, Handbrake.


You can get Handbrake here:


https://handbrake.fr/


A simple way to do it is to open Handbrake and do a File/Open Source.

Navigate to your video and choose it as the source from the resulting screen.

Then do File/Start Encoding. Wait a couple of minutes for the conversion to

complete. Then save and import the converted clip into iMovie.


If you want to preserve the .avi format of your original clips you can make duplicates

of them and then convert the duplicates in Handbrake. Probably safest to work with

duplicates in any case, in case something goes wrong with the conversion process, or

you want to do something different with the originals.


-- Rich

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User profile for user: Rich839
Rich839
User level: Level 8
48,476 points

Feb 5, 2021 10:27 AM in response to KLC3751

  1. Yes, I suggested h.264, Mp4/AAC because it is widely compatible and with good quality. Because it is fairly compressed, it is a viewing format rather than a format you would use if you had to do very precise professional style editing. However, I have found that it edits fine in iMovie. I also recommended it because iMovie likes Mp4/AAC. For simple editing and viewing by family, Mp4/AAC would be very suitable for your purposes.
  2. AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is an audio codec. iMovie actually requires AAC with the Mp4 format. AAC is more compressed than, say, AIFF but still renders good sound quality.
  3. I would think that the Mp4/AAC would look as good or better than .avi. However, quality often is in the eye of the beholder. Make a duplicate of one of your .avi clips. Convert the duplicate to Mp4/AAC. Then compare the two and see if the quality is satisfactory.
  4. If you have converted the .avi files to Mp4/AAC, and you are satisfied with the quality of the Mp4/AAC files, then you wouldn't need to keep the old .avi files if you don't want to. .avi is a very dated format that is not used much any more. The Windows system plays it, but Apple has moved away from it. You might want to keep them in case you later decide to convert them to a different format than Mp4/AAC. I personally keep everything, since external storage is so inexpensive. But of course it would be your call.

-- Rich

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User profile for user: Rich839
Rich839
User level: Level 8
48,476 points

Feb 5, 2021 11:55 AM in response to KLC3751

I have never looked into quality comparisons between .avi and other formats, so can't be of much help there.


I would convert one of your .avi clips to Mp4/AAC and see if you like it. The quality should be excellent, since it is one of the main viewing formats that is almost universally used.


As I mentioned, keep all of your present .avi files in case you want to change the converted format at a later time.


-- Rich

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User profile for user: KLC3751
KLC3751 Author
User level: Level 1
6 points

Feb 5, 2021 10:05 AM in response to Rich839

Thanks Rich, could I follow up with some more questions?


  1. From my googling I know that h.264 is a widely used Codec and that Mp4 is a widely used container. Did you choose them because they will be widely compatible while still giving good quality?
  2. I'm not familiar with AAC, is that a type of Mp4?
  3. Obviously I'm not looking for broadcast quality. My thoughts right now are to lightly edit these files and then put them on external HDDs for our viewing and to give to my children for their use and ultimately for their children too. Let's say my standard of excellence is viewing these videos on a 5k 27" iMac, will the h.264/Mp4 files look the same as the AVI file would or would they be noticeably poorer?
  4. If they are equivalent, is there any reason to keep the AVI files, assuming I have adequately backed everything up?


Thanks again for your help.

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User profile for user: KLC3751
KLC3751 Author
User level: Level 1
6 points

Feb 5, 2021 10:38 AM in response to Rich839

This is really helpful, thanks again. One more question, since my new Mac won't play AVI and therefore won't let me compare it to other formats, is there another less compressed/lossy file format comparable to AVI that I could use as a comparison with the h.264/Mp4 file to see if the quality is equivalent for me? I don't have a 5k iMac but the retina screen on my MacBook could substitute. You're right that quality is often subjective and this way I could compare them on the same screen.

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Editing avi files on new M1 Air

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