Converting MOV to AVI

I’ve written several articles recently about embedding MOV files and launching an external player from embedded MOV files to make viewing your movies easier. In general, I find the MOV format to be somewhat imperfect for sharing movies with all viewers because the format relies on your Web visitors to have QuickTime installed. iTunes effectively helps solve this problem because millions of iPod owners are required to install QuickTime as part of the iTunes install, but there are people fundamentally opposed to using QuickTime. One of my core frustrations with QuickTime is even when you purchase QuickTime Pro for all the editing features it includes, each new version requires another $30 deposit in the Apple business accounts. Playback isn’t the only time MOV comes into play - it’s also a popular format for recording videos with digital still cameras. Since I prefer to work in other formats, like WMV and certain flavors of MPEG-4, I’m inclined to convert my MOV files. AVI makes the most obvious pass-through format. By saving my video as an AVI, I can use it almost anywhere, which is why converting MOV to AVI is the subject of a recent tutorial. Free conversion apps like RAD Video Tools make all the difference.