Research Guides: Convert Video Formats: Home

Welcome

Welcome to How Do I Convert Video Formats, where you'll find resources to help you understand digital video formats, and how you can convert them to suit your needs.

Identifying your needs will be the hardest part of the process. For example, If you intend to:

	Embed your video into a Powerpoint Presentation, you would be doing yourself a favor by using a Windows Media Video (.wmv). Here is a list of acceptable video formats for Powerpoint.
	Upload your video to YouTube, your video must be under 2GB. Here is a list of acceptable video formats for YouTube.
	Archive your video, always try to stick with the native format in which the video was created. If you are capturing a live feed, choose the highest quality, least compressed format available.
	Author your video to DVD, most DVD software will transcode your video to MPEG-2 (.mpg) during the burning process.
	Put your video on your cell phone, you may have a number of choices depending on your mobile device. The most popular are 3GPP (.3gp) and MPEG-4 (.mp4).
	Edit your video in iMovie, a Quicktime Movie Video (.mov) will work best.

Once you know what video format you need, this Guide aims to help you get it.