EVO records in 3GP..how to convert

[tmaxey1]

So i have been recording a good amount of pool side videos in 720p on my EVO. I usually home movies through my western digital tv box with all my movies loaded on portable hard drives. So today i decide to take some movies from my phone to the hard drive and i realized that the phone records in 3gp. Why 3gp? That may be an old cell phone format but its not what todays 720p movies really record in.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a conversion software or file type to convert these movies. It seems kind of useless to record movies that can only be watched back on a computer.

And i know its not a canon hidef camcorder that cost over 1k. Its a cell phone.

 

[ScorpDX]

Free 3GP Video Converter: convert 3GP to AVI, 3GP to MP4, 3GP to MP3

 

[EarlyMon]

The 3gp container is suitable for H.263 and MPEG4 Part 2 video - it's a common mobile device storage container standard.

Personally, I have used this for years: Squared 5 - MPEG Streamclip video converter for Mac and Windows

It uses QuickTime for an engine (pretty good, ok), but if you're on Win and dislike Apple, they give an alternative to that.

If you're on a Mac, you want to fill out your codecs with: Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime components

On Win, Windows Media

 

[tmaxey1]

Great info guys. This is the type of contributions that make this board great. Even with all the bickering and back and forth that goes on.

Thanks again. Its much appreciated.

 

[pwnst*r]

A straight swap out from 3gp to a mp4 file is your most straightforward conversion. In that case, you're not converting codecs, you're just taking your MPEG4 video from the 3gp file container and putting it into the mp4 file container - nothing else gets fiddled with.

So you're saying there's no transcoding going on there? Lilke from .mp3 to .ogg?

 

[EarlyMon]

So you're saying there's no transcoding going on there? Lilke from .mp3 to .ogg?

That's what I'm saying. With MPEG Streamclip, the conversion from 3gp to mp4 file containers is roughly little more than the time it takes to click OK.

Note the minor change in file size - I also scanned the files with hexdump looking for more comparisons, but got bored.



Note that the .mp4 file container, aka MPEG4 Part 14, can hold various codecs - some believe that it's only for H.264, and that's not so.

A .ogg file, when used for audio, usually contains Vorbis or FLAC codec formats (yeah, a few others) - whereas, so far as I know, .mp3 files only contains the mp3 (MPEG1 audio layer 3) codec format.

Wrongepedia is helpful on this:

Comparison of container formats - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sorry, would've answered sooner, but I'm still getting a kick out of RemoteDroid - I've been re-watching season 1 of Bab5 on slashcontrol.

Man, I loves me my Evo - surfing around on my HTPC has never been easier.

PS - Actual bitrate on both was 5913.40 kbps and audio was mono @ 8 KHz.

PPS - The modification date on the second one to today was to reset the default pgm on my .mp4 files from MPEG Streamclip to QuickTime - I forgot that I had changed that the other day. That caused another 140 byte file header change - welcome to my operating system. ;P

 

[EarlyMon]

Oh - I should probably mention this - with MPEG Streamclip, when you're transcoding stuff, you can also adjust Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and audio volume.

I've been using it to move MPEG-2 video from my captured TV stuff into H.264 for distributing around the house.

It's really my Swiss Army knife for video conversion work.

 

[skinnyguy]

....try renaming? pretty sure it works...

 

[EarlyMon]

....try renaming? pretty sure it works...

Negative. That only works when the app reads the header, recognizes it, ignores that you've mucked with the name, and can support opening a 3gp container.

That's very platform specific and pathological at that.

 

[Evo_Pimpin]

Subscribed for the great info. Thanks EarlyMon.