The more you get into video editing, the more you need to know about the technical details of your video files.  Unless you restrict yourself to editing and viewing your video with the software that came with your camcorder, you will most likely have the need to convert your video files from one format to another. 

For example, if you have a Flip camcorder, you might want to edit your Flip video clips with Windows Movie Maker. The version of Windows you are using -- XP, Vista, or Windows 7 -- determines which versions of Windows Movie Maker (or Windows Live Movie Maker) you can use.  You may have already found a way to edit your Flip videos with one of these -- I have talked about many ways on the FlipInFocus.com website -- but still find that it doesn't always work, for reasons that are sometimes incomprehensible.  One way that always works, on all versions of the software, is to convert your Flip videos to Windows Media Video files (.wmv).

In this article on FlipInFocus.com, I described these problems in some detail.  At the bottom of the article, there is a link to download one of many free video file converters -- this one chosen for its ease of use and its effectiveness with Flip video files.

When you convert video files, you want to preserve the quality of the original, and the best way to do that is to match certain details of the original file when you convert it.  There is a free utility that is in wide use, among those in the know, for getting the details you need.  This free utility is called MediaInfo, and you can download it by clicking here.

After downloading it, run the executable file.  The installation procedure should be familiar, except for one part where it offers you the opportunity to install another program, which I passed on.  When you first run the program, you will be greeted with a dialogue asking for your preferences that looks like this:

The only change I'm going to make is to pull down the "Output format" menu and select "Custom," and then click the "OK" button.

When the program opens, its contents will be mostly blank, except for a line of text that says "(You must at least open one file)".  Open the video file you want to convert by a) Using the "File" menu to navigate to and select the file,  or b) dragging it from a file browser into the program.  Once you have done this, you should see something like the following (for a Flip .mp4 file):

I have highlighted in yellow the information you will need in your video file converter.  That is, when you convert the file to Windows Media Video (.wmv), set the converter program's output parameters to match these as closely as possible:

Video Bitrate: 8994 kbps [kilobits per second]
Dimensions: 1280 x 720 pixels
Frame Rate: 30 fps [frames per second]
Audio Bitrate: 132 kbps [kilobits per second]
Audio Sample Rate: 44.1 kHz [kiloHerz]
Audio Channels: 2 [stereo]

We will be talking more about video file conversion on FlipInFocus.com.  Members can ask questions about this tip, get answers, and offer their own suggestions by clicking the "Add new comment" link, below.