AV and Multimedia Related Thread, Panasonic Camcorder .MOD format woes in Technical; Last desperate attempt to find out if the .MOD video format can be converted to something useful.
Basically, we have ...
Last desperate attempt to find out if the .MOD video format can be converted to something useful.
Basically, we have made the mistake of purchasing some Panasonic camcorders, without realising the video formats issue. The Panasonic software is useless for editing, and doesn't recognise any network drives, so is driving me round the bend. The file extension for the recordings is .MOD, and I've had a good look on the forums here, but the convertors I have downloaded don't recognise the format. Windows Media Player plays only the sound and doesn't seem able to find a suitable codec.
Is there any hope? Or should we sell them on eBay and start again?
Hi, I don't know if this is a good idea but I've found just renaming the file extension to .mpeg works. I'm not an expert on video formats, codecs etc - but it gets the video into movie maker and has no discernible effect on the quality.
Hi, I don't know if this is a good idea but I've found just renaming the file extension to .mpeg works. I'm not an expert on video formats, codecs etc - but it gets the video into movie maker and has no discernible effect on the quality.
We found changing .mod files from Canon FS100 camcorders to .avi usualy made them work. However since we also have Serif MoviePlus we're now discouraging the use of movie maker.
I've attached a little doofer I made in Autoit so students could change the file entention.
Thanks all. Used AVS Video Converter (link above) and that worked fine, with a really easy interface. Shall have to investigate getting an activation code to get rid of the annoying watermark, but not expensive as we will only need one copy on a laptop to run the conversion. I'll have a play with changing the file extension too though. Would be cheaper.
Thanks. I did see the stuff on Wikipedia about ffmpeg, but was put off by command line interface. Have had a look at the ffdshow link you sent me, and it appears to be in another language so I followed the link from there to the SourceForge page:
Strangely YouTube Downloader - Software to download and convert YouTube video has an excellent conversion function which can take many formats as it's input and will output them to many formats (think it prob uses ffmpeg) works on files from a Sony HDD camcorder and on VOB files from DVD camcorder. As a quick fix converted them to WMV which were editable in windows movie maker
I have been asked to buy 2 camcorders for SLG to film lessons and to facilitate teachers to edit the footage and upload it to the VLE. We don't need any fancy features such as transitions really.
Seem to be having difficulty finding video editing software that it most importantly VERY easy to use and is modern and will accept most exotic camcorder formats such as MOD and TOD.
Thinking Windows Live Movie maker should fit the bill but this only works on vista or win7 and 95% of our machines are downgraded to XP. S'pose I could upgrade a few to Vista.
Don't really want to go down the route of playing with dodgy codecs and plugins for windows movie maker 2.1 as I suspect teachers would run into issues. Also for ease of use want to avoid converting the footage before editing.
Have been looking at Corel, Pinnacle and Serif Movie Plus but they all seem to have a relatively cluttered interface which may confuse staff who just want to do some basic editing and save to a web optimised format.
Last desperate attempt to find out if the .MOD video format can be converted to something useful.
Basically, we have made the mistake of purchasing some Panasonic camcorders, without realising the video formats issue. The Panasonic software is useless for editing, and doesn't recognise any network drives, so is driving me round the bend. The file extension for the recordings is .MOD, and I've had a good look on the forums here, but the convertors I have downloaded don't recognise the format. Windows Media Player plays only the sound and doesn't seem able to find a suitable codec.
Is there any hope? Or should we sell them on eBay and start again?
Arrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! It's like BETT all over again!!
*Russ brought a camcorder with him to take footage and interviews on and it too had a rubbishy propriatary codec which ment much faffage all around getting it into a useable 'common' format. I HATE manufacturers that do this to their products. You hear us Panasonic? STOP IT! It's upsetting people. What's wrong with mpg, avi, mp4 or any of the raft of other formats? Sheesh.
** Goes for a lie down after that unpleasant trip down memory lane.
Arrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! It's like BETT all over again!!
*Russ brought a camcorder with him to take footage and interviews on and it too had a rubbishy propriatary codec which ment much faffage all around getting it into a useable 'common' format. I HATE manufacturers that do this to their products. You hear us Panasonic? STOP IT! It's upsetting people. What's wrong with mpg, avi, mp4 or any of the raft of other formats? Sheesh.
** Goes for a lie down after that unpleasant trip down memory lane.
Are there any HDD camcorders that support a usable common format? If there are perhaps we should name them and enter a pact to only buy those camcorders.
MOD is another wrapper for MPG, so just renaming from .mod to .mpg will work usually. You can get them to work by renaming to .avi, but some software still won't accept them as it then expects an avi container with diff codecs within, but sees an mpg stream so chucks it's dummy out.
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Originally Posted by SneakyBeaky 
