I took video footage of my mom’s 75th birthday celebration with my miniDV hd camera.  I saved the files in my computer through Windows Movie Maker.  So now it’s in WMV format.  After that I burnt a back up on a DVD-R, that i shipped to my cousin who resides in another country.  She tried to check out the footage with her Panasonic DVD player, but it was not playing.  The DVD player just showed off a “disc error” indication.  If you’ve got this experience, probably it is very much required that you learn how to convert video clips, mainly convert WMV to AVI.

Or else you might have downloaded video clips in your Windows Mobile powered gadgets – Microsoft Zune, Xbox 360 Console, etc. – and you like to enjoy these in the old Pioneer DVD player.  When you finish making the files on storage disk, you see that the WMV formatting is incompatible with your DVD player.  Once again, a WMV to AVI conversion would be in order.

What the heck is WMV, and why does it necessary to convert WMV to AVI?  WMV or Windows Media Video is a video compression format created and controlled by Microsoft.  It is a generic name for Microsoft’s video encoding solutions.  In the beginning it had been designed for web buffering and downloading contents.  Earlier editions were according to MPEG-4 Part 2 but the latest variant (WMV10) makes use of Microsoft’s own video encoding engineering instead.  It is made to be compatible with Windows Media for playback and file management capabilities.  Microsoft claims that the most recent version of WMV offers improved data compresion ratio that MPEG-4.  WMV works with Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, MPlayer, The KMPlayer, Media Player Classic and VLC Media Player.  For Mac users, you have the third party Flip4Mac, that allows Mac users to experience WMV files using QuickTime.  While Linux users can rely on MPlayer and MEncoder for WMV playback.

Having said that, quite a few standalone DVD players, especially the older models, do not identify WMV.  At this time, the more widely used data format is AVI.  AVI is short for Audio Video Interleave.  It is a container format developed by Microsoft for Windows multimedia framework.  But when compared with WMV and MPEG-4, AVI is a much older data format which does not have some attributes present in modern containers.  Even so, it is still backed in Windows and ideal for DV.  One benefit from AVI is usually that it can be created with no compression.  The implication of this uncompressed AVI is usually that there is no loss of quality from your input video to your saved file.  Not surprisingly the consequence is an extremely large file size.

If you’d stop and think it over, you’ll come to the realization that technology appears to be making life more difficult for me and you.  Couldn’t the WMV been developed in reverse compatible so that it can still be recognized by my old Pioneer DVD player and your not so recent Panasonic unit?  That would mean that it won’t be necessary to convert WMV to AVI.  Likely this is what they mean by planned obsolescence.  After a couple of years, our gadgets isn’t going to be suitable with existing technologies.  This will persuade us to get the latest state-of-the-art devices.  Yes, these could be more feature-laden.  But do we need all those features to begin with?  And what if our old gadgets continue to be very functional, just as my sister’s Pioneer machine and also your Panasonic player?  And this is done for the sake of business profits.  So what can the ordinary consumer do?  If we don’t choose the device upgrade, our only recourse may be to convert our WMV to AVI.

So as to convert WMV to AVI, we’ll need a WMV to AVI converter.  The Wondershare Video Converter Platinum is great for this purpose.  All we need is access to the internet to get a free download of the trial software.  Once we get the installer, we can commence installation by just following the guide.  When the program is fully installed, we can launch the software and conversion process will start off.  Simply click the “add” button on screen and choose the WMV file (or files) we need to convert.  For our purpose, the output is AVI.  Note that several files can be converted simultaneously.  Clicking on the “settings” button will allow basic video editing like cropping, trimming and adding subtitles.  If all you are after is to convert WMV to AVI, simply click the “start” button and then the conversion process is initiated.

Now that we’ve converted WMV to AVI, my sister can play the video clip of my mom’s birthday and you’ll play those videos in your old DVD player.  This is technology at work.

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