Why My iMovie Can Not Read AVI

Import the AVI files to iMovie from Sony digital camera, flip video camera, or some AVI movies downloaded from the Internet, can be a painful experience for many Mac users. Because we will usually get into some troubles, like it played well in  Quicktime, but when importing to iMovie, it just goes through the copying process, but nothing showed up in the screen. Or imported it into iMovie, but without sound or image.

How does it happened? Because the iMovie can only reads AVI files that both the audio and the video were compressed by using a codec that it can recognized. If iMovie can' t recognize your AVI video files, that would be the codec used to create the AVI file is not supported by iMovie, even if you have installed Perian, a component that can let you play AVI files in QuickTime.

So if you want to edit AVI files in iMovie, the easiest way would be converting them to an iMovie compatible format.

Related Post: How to import AVI files to iMovie

Pirates Of The Caribbean:On Stranger Tides Wallpaper Download

6 pieces of Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Top 5 Converter Giveaway in Coming Halloween

As the Halloween is coming, those software companies have moved out for their Halloween Party and Promotion. They want to take this opportunity to attract more people to be their fans and promote their own products.
Okay, I went to those sites to see what they are going to do on Halloween and wrote down my reviews here, you can take a look and at and judge which is more attractive.


The companies below displays in the alphabetic order:


1.Aunsoft
Aunsoft will giveaway their MTS/M2TS Converter for Win, which is $29 in full price. what you need to do is just launch their facebook fanpage and click "Like".
And the promotion has a discount up to 50%. This activity will expires on Nov 4.
Link: http://www.aunsoft.com/halloween/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Aunsoft-Software-Fans/143601159011039

2.Leawo

Compared with the Aunsoft, Leawo send more surprises, they are going to give away their all-in-one video converter from Oct 31 to Nov 1,two days, which can solve almost all video formats converting.

Their promotion is also attractive, iAM Total Converter for Mac,at a reduced price $40 now, while the original is $70, it includes Mac Video Converter and Mac DVD Ripper, I think that would be a nice tool for Mac users.

All of these discount only for their fans, you have to "Like" them on facebook first.

Link: http://www.leawo.com/software-giveaway.html
http://www.facebook.com/Leawo?v=app_7146470109

3.Pavtube

Maybe Pavtube's promotion is not the most attractive, but it would be funniest. The Halloween page on their site is full of Halloween atmosphere. You have to click the pumpkins to get a discount for their products, it's all depends on your luck, but you can try again after you failed. If you have good luck and patience, you may have a discount up to 90%. And I found a funny thing there, their employee made a mistake that give the wrong discount with the price. such as original price is $45, 10% discount, but only take $4.5.

Link: http://www.pavtube.com/halloween/halloween.html

4.Wondershare

Wondershare take an interesting mode in this Halloween promotion. Their treat hold from Oct 25 to Oct 31, offer two star products everyday, and the price is out of control, using a countdown mode, the price will reduce from $7.9 to $0.0 day by day.

Link: http://www.wondershare.com/topic/halloween/

http://www.facebook.com/wondershare?v=app_11007063052

5.Xilisoft

Xilisoft never make any giveaway, so does this Halloween. They give a discount up to 40% about 9 products. In general, there is no new things.

Link: http://www.xilisoft.com/holiday-promotion.html

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Xilisoft/118104983583

Okay, are you interested in any Halloween promotion above? Move your mouse!

You may want to read Top 10 Halloween iphone apps.

Freemake - A Friendly Freeware

Although I have used so many converters, but I think Freemake's UI is the best. It dosen't has many magnificent pictures and effects, but only friendly to users. It has a very lovely UI while the icons are easy to read, I promise that you can understand the meaning of the buttons as soon as you saw them. Actually，it's really a very easy-to-use ware. 
Okay, here are two videos of its video converter and video downloader, great guide videos. Let's enjoy them.

How to convert FLV files to MP4

Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver video over the Internet. It has quickly established itself as the format of choice for embedded video on the web. Notable users of the Flash Video format include YouTube, Hulu, Google Video, Yahoo! Video, metacafe, Reuters.com, and many other news providers.
But FLV format is not supported by some devices like iPhone, iPod and HTC phones,etc. So it makes some trouble when we want to watch the video on our phones that downloaded from YouTube. We just need to convert it to suit our portable devices.
Now we have known how to download the YouTube Video(20 Free Ways to Download Any Video off),and the rest is how to convert FLV files to MP4.


Things we need
Free MP4 Converter, a freeware that can convert FLV files to MP4. Click here to download



Steps
1. Download the install file and setup.
2. Run the converter, click“Add” button to add the original FLV files.
3. Click profile and select a output format. You can find many formats in "Common Video" menu, choose the one which you are going to convert to.
4. Click "setting" button and do some advanced settings, such like video codec, quality, resolution, bitrate, framerate and aspect ratio etc. you can optimize a video as your wishes.(Free version can't do this)
If you have done all the steps above, what you need to do is only to click the "Convert" and wait for the converting finished.

Well, convert FLV files to MP4 is so easy, just 4 steps, and you can also convert FLV files to AVI, MOV, etc. by using this tool.

Leawo Free MP4 Converter

I have posted some crack and freeware before, xilisoft, cucusoft and format factory. Today, I recommend another freeware - Leawo Free MP4 Converter. We can know something about it from its name. First, it's a freeware, clearly free, no watermark, no timelimits. And second, it support various format input and output, like FLV to MP4, MP4 to MP3, FLV to WMV/AVI, AVI to MOV, you can see the detailed information below.

References

Output Device Support
iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PSP, PS3, Archos AV500, Archos AV700, Creative Zen, iRiver PMP, Zune
Input File Format
FLV, WMV, ASF, WMA, AVI, RMVB, RM, RA, MOV, QT, MP4, M4V, DV, 3GP, 3G2, DAT, MPG, MPEG, MP3, VOB, MKV, MKA, MTS, M2TS, F4V
Output File Format Support
Video	AVI, MOV, MP4
Audio	AAC, M4A, MP3
Image	JPEG, THM, BMP

What's New

1. Optimized the menu display pattern.
2. Optimized the encoding speed of Xvid and H.264.
3. Convert FLV files to MP4 is available.
4. 6 languages optional.
5. Add support to MKV format.
6. RMVB decoding is optimized.
7. Support adding image and text watermarks.

Sreenshot 

Download: http://www.leawo.com/video-converter/free-mp4converter.html

20 Free Ways to Download Any Video off the Internet

It seems like everyone these days is downloading, watching, and sharing videos from video-sharing sites like YouTube, Google Video, MetaCafe, DailyMotion, Veoh, Break, and a ton of other similar sites. Whether you want to watch the video on your iPod while working out, insert it into a PowerPoint presentation to add some spice, or simply download a video before it’s removed, it’s quite essential to know how to download, convert, and play these videos.

There are basically two ways to download videos off the Internet and that’s how I’ll split up this post: either via a web app or via a desktop application. Personally, I like the desktop applications better simply because you can have many more settings for the video, although the web application is easy to use and you don’t need to download any software.

Free Web services for downloading videos from video-sharing sites

	ClipNabber allows you to download videos from YouTube, Metacafe, etc by simply copying and pasting the URL. You’ll then get a link whereby you can download the file to your computer, iPod, iPhone, or any other media player. You’ll need to have an FLV player for the YouTube videos. Quick and very easy to use!
	Zamzar is a free online file conversion web application that can not only convert videos off the Internet to AVI, MPEG, 3GP, MP4, MOV, etc, but also converts between audio, image, and document formats. Paste the URL into Step 1 and then convert the file to your favorite format.
	VideoDownloader is a FireFox extension, but also allows you to paste in any URL from many sites such as Blip.TV, iFilm, and even social networking sites like MySpace. You can also download a free FLV player from their site to play the videos.
	Vixy.net is another site that not only downloads online videos, but will also convert them AVI, MOV, MP4, 3GP, or MP3 (if you want to extract the audio from the file). Using this site, you don’t have to worry about downloading a FLV player as you can convert it to Windows format. (Same as Zamzar)
	KeepVid also supports just about any video sharing site out there and the only difference about this site is that it also has a Top Videos section, so you can quickly download the most watched videos around the web.
	Media Converter is similar to ZamZar and vixy.net, but requires you to create an account and log in. Also, it seems like it only supports downloading and converting videos from YouTube. You can also download their video download program, but it only supports 5 sites.
	Hey! Watch is an online video encoding web service that encodes video into different formats including HD very quickly. The graphical interface is very nice and there are lots of features and options, such as the ability to transfer any video from the web directly to an FTP server or to online storage.
	YoutubeX, as the name suggests, allows you to download videos from YouTube. Obviously, it only supports YouTube, but it has a couple of other features, such as the ability to play your video on the site and find popular videos quickly.
	VideoRonk searches across multiple video-sharing sites such as Google Video, YouTube, MetaCafe and DailyMotion to find the most popular videos on each of them. You can either watch them on VideoRonk or download them to your computer in FLV format.
	VidDownloader supports about 10 sites including the major ones and can download the videos in DivX AVI format. It’s very easy to use and can also extract only the audio from a video by choosing “Just Audio” on the download page. You don’t have to worry about having an FLV player since it converts the files to Windows format.
	Kcoolonline, according to their web site, they support more than 98 video sites including MySpace, CollegeHumor, iFilm, etc. You’ll have to rename the files you download from YouTube with the .FLV extension at the end.
	Download videos is a foreign site, but is easy to use and supports most of the major sites. You can also download a free FLV player off their site to play videos from YouTube.
	DownThisVideo has a nice tag cloud at the top that you can click on to find videos quickly. From what I could tell, this site is mostly used by Japanese because the popular videos are mostly Anime, etc. However, you can still use it to download any YouTube video.

Video Downloaders for your PC

If you prefer to have a desktop application that can download videos for you, check out the following list:

1. YouTube Downloader - A good video downloader and accelerator software, it can help you watch video fast. And it packed a brower which provide some HD movies watching free online.

2. Orbit Downloader – This is by far the best desktop application I have seen for downloading any type of social media off the Internet. It can download videos and music from MySpace, YouTube, Pandora, Rapidshare, and lots more. It has a great interface and carries a very small foot print.

3. VDownloader – A small little application that can download videos from many sites and converts them to AVI or MPG format.

4. VideoDownloader – A useful FireFox add-on that supports more than 60 video sharing sites. It can also download other objects on a web page, such as movies, MP3s, flash files, and Quicktime movies directly.

5. Ares Tube – Another popular video download application that is very small and very easy to use. You can download videos in batches by entering URLs into a queue and Ares Tube can convert them into different formats such as iPod, MP4, MPG, etc.

6. YouTubeGrabber – Not a very fancy program, it simply takes your URL and downloads the file. No conversion is done and you’ll need to install an FLV player to watch the videos.

7. KeepV – Downloads videos from YouTube, MySpace, and Google and converts them to either MOV, 3GP, AVI, iPod, or PSP format.

Hopefully, using one of the tools above, you can download the video you want! I’m sure the arsenal of web services and desktop apps will grow, so this list will be updated as needed.