[ This article was first published in the June, 2009, issue of
Larry’s Final Cut Pro Newsletter. Click here to subscribe. ]
Kevin Worthington asks:
I have a 7 minute video clip that needs to be converted from a Quicktime movie to Windows Media. I first exported using Quicktime conversion but the process stalled at about 35% completed. I then exported from Final Cut as a regular Quicktime movie but, using Quicktime Pro, the conversion to wmv still hangs up at about 35% completed each time. Any ideas what I may be doing wrong or if there is a better way to do this?
Larry replies: Kevin, I’m amazed you could even get QuickTime to start. Worse, this is creating a very old version of WMV.
It would be MUCH easier to create a high-quality QuickTime movie, then use either Adobe Premiere (on Mac or PC) to create the WMV, or just move it to a PC and create it there.
There are a number of Mac applications that also create WMV files – Flip4Mac is the first one that comes to mind. Another, newer, program is DV Kitchen, from DV Creators.
UPDATE – June 16, 2009
Stuart Page writes:
I like Autodesk Cleaner for creating WMV files.
UPDATE – June 18, 2009
Bob Hirschfeld writes:
I’ve been using Cleaner for years and it works very well, although it is far more expensive (around $600) than Flip4Mac. The advantage is that it does an excellent job compressing video files, whether or not you are asking it to also change the clip’s file type. The product has had several changes of ownership, and is now sold by Autodesk in PC and Mac flavors. There is a 30-day free trial.
I shoot a lot of HDV video, edit it for non-streaming use on our website, so the files need to be relatively small so they can be downloaded reasonably fast. Our intranet is standardized for Quicktime, but for external use, I need to also create WMV versions. Cleaner is perfect, although I’ve also tried Sorenson Squeeze, which also works well and is priced about the same.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=5562025&siteID=123112
Larry replies: Thanks, Stuart and Bob, for writing.
