MOV files are some of the most common video files on the internet and people have an irritating habit of giving you MOV files that you can’t use on your windows machine (even with QuickTime installed) because of the difference in encoding types. Luckily, through a ridiculous process of trial and error, I have figured out a way to get those MOV files from your mac to your PC in a usable format.

Unfortunately you are going to need some tools to pull this off:

• QuickTime Pro (this is essential if you don’t have a Mac – but if you don’t have a Mac it might not work)
• iMovie (if you don’t have QuickTime on your Mac)
• A Mac (if your QuickTime on Windows can’t view the video)

Before we start, you should probably be aware that AVI is a really frustrating format to use. There are a zillion different codecs out there and that can cause a lot of problems with viewing them when they are created on different machines. Usually, if you are not going to be editing the file, I would say just go ahead and export them from iMovie (or what ever video editor you are using) as an MPEG. This is much more convenient and the format you would write to a disk in anyway. But, if you are like me and have a need to edit on a PC and all you have is a bunch of MOV files that don’t work on Windows Vista (but do on Mac) your going to have to take some steps to get that righted. So, here we go.

1. First test all your files in QuickTime. If QuickTime can view them the you can skip to step number 4 and begin exporting. If you are on a Mac for this test with QuickTime there is no garauntee of this working right away because I haven’t tested it from QuickTime on Mac.
2. Gather all of your videos and take them over to your Mac machine. To export as another file you will need to import the video into iMovie. Right-click or control-click on the footage and choose to add it to the project. Once it is added you can choose ‘Share->Export Using Quick Time’. Once in that menu choose to export as an AVI and then in the options dropdown choose the ‘Animation’ preset.Note: if you choose your own settings using my recommendation in for exporting from QuickTime in step number 4 you would probably be able to skip the whole QuickTime Pro part.
3. Go ahead and export.
4. Once you have that you can take it over to your PC and open it up in QuickTime Pro. Choose ‘File->Export’. Select AVI as the export type then click ‘Options’ side button. In the video settings you can choose your own set up. What I chose was ‘Compression’ ‘None’ and maximized quality.

I hope this helps you. I realize its not extremely clear right now so if you have any questions please let me know and I can update this post so that it can better help everybody.