So now that I’ve converted basically my entire “video life” to the Mac platform and iMovie (and final cut studio soon…), I hit a roadblock when I tried to bring WMV’s from my previous Windows-life into iMovie. So I tried a few tricks and while my tricks are usually pretty handy, I couldn’t find a good way to go from WMV to MP4, or even to go from WMV to MOV.
The iMovie WMV Problem
As we know, iMovie likes MP4s and MOVs, but doesn’t like WMVs. Thus began the search for a good WMV to MP4 converter. After doing much browsing, I came across the free” Any Video Converter” and I’m quite happy with it. Now there are hundreds (if not more) programs that will convert one type of video to another, but being the cautious guy that I am, I’m not to thrilled about the prospect of downloading an “unverified” program. Thus I headed to my trusty cnet.com (where I download virtually all of my open-source software), and after some digging I came across the “Any Video Converter” and got to work right away.
The iMovie WMV Solution
Any Video Converter is great in that the interface is simple and easy to understand, and there are a bunch of options for converting. There is no preset option to convert WMV to MOV, but you can go from WMV to MP4 and WMV to MP4 optimized for mobile. The conversions are quick and the quality is excellent. I mention this because I tried a few other converters to try to go from WMV to MP4 and found that there were either errors on conversion (conveniently noted after the file was converted), or that the quality was poor and grainy — even on a high quality setting. In the words of Coach Taylor (FNL), “it’s not lost on me” that low video quality begets low video quality, but Any Video Converter does a good job of maintaining the quality of the original in the converted outputted (is that a word?) video.
While I do always like to download from cnet.com, you can get more information about “Any Video Converter” at their website at: http://www.any-video-converter.com/products-freeware/.