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I found this old CD of video clips that are all .avi files, I've found out the codec is IV50 (Indeo v5). They won't open in VLC in Mac OS X but do open in WMP9 on my Windows machine. Does anyone know of a converter program that supports converting from IV50 to some usable Quicktime format (hopefully MPEG4)?

UPDATE: Thanks for the answers, I looked into ffmpeg and it looks like it will be useful in the future if I need to do anything else with video. The solution I ended up going with was importing the clips into, of all things, Windows Movie Maker and exporting with a usable codec.

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ffmpeg and MEncoder (comes with Mplayer) are probably the two most comprehensive video conversion/decoding/encoding tools available. I'd suggest giving them a try.

I think MEncoder may utilise codecs on the system [not certain about this], so I would try doing the conversion on a windows PC that is capable of playing them as that way you know you have a valid codec for the format.

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ffmpeg does not use the codecs in the OS, and I know from previous experience it doesn't support IV50. Not sure about mencoder though. – Badaro Jul 24 '09 at 17:52
@Badaro: Thanks, I've updated with your new info. Post back if you get it working so we can come up with a definitive answer for future reference. – Simon P Stevens Jul 24 '09 at 19:01
YMMV, but I did a quick test, and while mplayer/mencoder can play the file using the installed DirectShow codec, my attempts to convert an IV50 file to another format using it resulted in a corrupted file. – Badaro Jul 24 '09 at 19:25
I would guess that if MPlayer can play the file it is almost certainly possible to convert it. What command line are you using? – Simon P Stevens Jul 24 '09 at 19:30
It converts the file but the output doesn't play properly. Here's a commandline I tested: mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=300:vpass=1 output_xvid.avi -o sample_teste.avi – Badaro Jul 24 '09 at 19:56
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While meGUI is not the most user-friendly tool around, it's an amazing converter with high-quality presets for MP4. Also, since it uses AviSynth for input, anything that plays in WMP will work on it.

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Try this website and click on convert tab on the left side.... and select your avi file and then choose a output formate "mov" which is a Quicktime media file format.... hope this tip will be working for you... Freefileconvert

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Handbrake works great.

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media player classic comes bundled with quicktimealternative

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