AVI to JPEG conversion
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Good software to convert AVI to JPEG, i.e. to extract photos of a video sequence and store them as still pictures,
- jpeg photo files -, is not so easy to find as one could believe.
Sometimes it may happen that you shoot a video of an ephemeral scene and don't have the time to take also some digital photos.
But you would like to have some.
Or you would like to illustrate a page with a few shots extracted from your video.
You need a software to convert AVI to JPEG.
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I did try out a bunch of them.
A lot of time wasted and a lot of surprises was the result.
Some video to still image converters did complain with various error messages while installing them.
Others could be installed, but did complain and crash immediatly when trying to launch them.
A third group finally could be installed, did launch apparently properly, but then they refused to open an avi file.
Do you think the pain was over after that ? No...
There was a fourth group that DID open the avi file, but did refuse to extract a frame of it.
No AVI to JPEG conversion yet !
Crazy ! I would not have imagined that a simple AVI to JPEG conversion could be such a frustrating task.
Extracting photos out of a video file
But finally, I found a jewel that converts AVI to JPEG well,
is very user friendly with a clear self-evident presentation.
Indeed this
Video Converter
does much more than just extracting photos out of a video sequence.
It converts from video formats to still image formats (this is what I was looking for):
MPEG, WMV, Quick Time, AVI to JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PCX, WMF, EMF, TIFF, TGA, RAS, J2K.
Extracting one image
The
Video Converter I did retain has a built-in player,
while many similar products would open an external video player to play the movie.
This has the advantage to let you go backwards and forwards image by image when you are looking for the exact image you want to capture.
Not all external players are able to move back and forth
image by image.
If they could, they would need to be able to communicate with the AVI to JPEG converter to tell which frame you want to capture.
A built-in player is the right solution in this case.
Converting all frames to still images
The
Video Converter is also able to convert the complete AVI to JPEG.
This will eventually generate a huge amount of JPEGs of course.
You can also define a segment of the video you want to convert from AVI to JPEG.
Just move a slider on the start position and another slider on the stop position.
Only frames within these limits will be extracted and converted from AVI to JPEG.
Converting between video formats
But the
Video Converter,
as its name suggests, converts also from one video format to other video formats:
from MPEG, WMV, Quick Time, AVI to MPEG, WMV, RM, AVI.
Be aware that most video players and video converters may have problems to open some files.
This not their fault.
It is due to the fact that so many subtypes and codecs exist.
If a video file cannot be opened, you will probably need to install some codecs that are not yet installed on your pc.
Splitting video files
This is another task that the
Video Converter masters well.
Just take the sliders mentionned above and define the segment you want to be written in a new file.
Extracting the sound of a video file
Another feature of the Video Converter is its ability to convert video to audio files,
i.e. extracting the audio part of the video file.
The numerous audio formats you can export to are:
1. PCM (uncompressed WAV)
2. ADPCM, A-LAW, U-LAW, DSP, GSM and other compressed WAVs
3. MP3, MP2
4. Ogg
5. WMA
6. AVI
7. AIFF (Apple)
8. AU (UNIX)
9. G.721, G.723, G.726
10. VOX (Dialogic ADPCM)
11. RAW
12. MPC (MusicPack)
Batch converting video files
Need to convert a bunch of video files to another format ?
Batch processing is built into the Video Converter software too.
Joining video files
The ultimate feature of the Video Converter,
its ability to join as many short video sequences as you want into one long video.
Therefore you define a batch convert process and a check "To a merged file".
My initial task was to convert AVI to JPEG and finally I found a reliable software that does much much more than that.
With some competitors you may need to get as many as 6 different products to cover the features described.
The most incredible with this
"AVI to JPEG" Video Converter:
it is not crammed full, it is clear and self-explanatory and has very few additional dialog boxes,
because all you need is there in the main window.
