Converting Multimedia Files

More faculty and students are making movies and recording audio files. It seems like our Flip cameras and audio recorders are constantly checked out of the library, and the circulation desk is asking for more recording devices.

One of the biggest problems in dealing with video and audio files when it comes to editing is the size and the format of the file. You record a movie with a Flip camera, which creates an mp4 movie file. You want to edit it in Windows Movie Maker, but the editing program doesn't recognize mp4 files.

Let's say you want to use VoiceThread to share a movie and have a discussion around it. The upload size limit in Voice Thread is 25MB but your movie is a 100MB, mp4 file created with a Flip camera. Here is a movie where I show you how we got around the problem in one class. It took three programs to resize and upload the movie to the web.

However, there is a simpler solution. My clever work study student Cory E, found Freemake, a free software that allows you to easily convert media files and re-size them as needed. Watch Cory explain how to do this.