I have been capturing video in AVI format from an analogue camcorder using, alternately, xawtv on Linux and Pinnacle Studio on Windows.

Basically, I haven't found any decent video editing tools for Linux or Windows, and I need some way - any way at all - to get these AVI files into a format that iMovie HD - that's the Apple iLife component for video editing - can import. As far as I can see, that means outputting as either a DV stream, an MPEG-4 (Simple Profile), or maybe, a Quicktime mov.

These are 360x540 MJPG AVI files at 24.997 fps.

I haven't a clue where to start, although I've confused myself in the process of investigating tovid, ffmpeg, avidemux and others. I don't mind if I have to convert to an interim format - replace AVI with MPEG-2 if you like; I can do that.

Please help if you can!
Thanks.

Have you tried mencoder? It can encode any file MPlayer can play into a plethora of other formats (and I think that Quick Time format is supported)
If you're using Debian, it can be installed by "apt-get install mencoder"
If you're using another distro, try a site like http://www.rpmfind.net

If it can read mpeg1 files, then it's easy, but you'll have to cross check that.

Here is how to convert:

Before you can do this you will have to install Tovid. The following lines are applicable for the region that I live in. Check the Tovid homepage on what you need to put in the command line.

tovid -pal -vcd filename.rm filename
tovid -pal -vcd filename.avi filename

The extension .mpg will be automatically added after the filename.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like iMovie even accepts mpeg1. So mpg files are mpeg1 are they?

MEncoder looks like my best bet. Well, it did:

$ mencoder input.avi -o 19932.mov -oac pcm -ovc qtvideo

...

SwScaler: BICUBIC scaler, from Planar 422P to Packed YUY2 using C
Cannot find requested component
FATAL: Cannot initialize video driver.
Pos: 0.0s 1f ( 0%) 0fps Trem: 0min 0mb A-V:0.000 [0:0]
1 duplicate frame(s)!
Segmentation faultf ( 0%) 0fps Trem: 0min 0mb A-V:0.004 [0:0]

I'm hoping that, whatever I do, QuickTime Pro might be a last resort that'll work: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/pro/specs.html

This is complicated. I just want to edit my videos!

I'll tell you what I've done:

mencoder input.avi -o 19933.mov -oac pcm -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=1

I don't know what that means but it seems to have worked. I mean, there weren't any errors. I get a .mov file that plays in mplayer; only remains to see if it has worked. I'd still appreciate any guidance from any who can give it! Thanks.

A program called LiVES works with many video and audio codecs.

The command that you did just outputs to an avi format. MPlayer is smart enough to use the binary data instead the extension. If you want to convert to dv make sure you install the dv tools.

Converting a lossy material to a lossy material is not very good because it only will get worst. I suggest re-capture the video with mencoder using a lossless codec.

Thanks - I'll try lives.

I'm a complete beginner, however, and lossy and lossless codecs means nothing to me. If I stumble upon the method, or read a few hundred books on it, I'll be sure to follow that advice. Thanks.

By the way, what do you think of these commands:

transcode -i clip.avi -x lav -o clip.dv -y dvraw
and
mencoder input.avi -o 19933.dv -oac pcm -ovc libdv -vf scale=720:480

There were no errors.

Just go to wikipedia.org and search for lossy and lossless.

mencoder by default outputs to avi files, so if you want to use another video file format use -of. If you want to know what output formats are available, type mencoder -of help.

transcode is better at syncing audio and video. It is able to use mplayer to support a magnitude of audio and video codecs. Use mencoder for video recording from an video capture card.

OK, thanks.
But do you think QuickTime Pro would be able to do it, if everything ends up going wrong? Most of my transcode experiments so far have resulted in either green foam output, or a segmentation fault, and when I tried to save it as a DV stream in Lives, I just got an empty file.

This command:

transcode -i input.mpg -x mpeg2 -o chris7.dv -y dvraw

Where input.mpg is an MPEG2 file, gives the best result: an upside-down blue DV stream.