I've recently bought a camera phone, which captures video in MPEG-4 format. I've been struggling for a few days trying to figure out how to view and edit these on my computer.

A search of the forum found a couple of threads, and turned me on to BS player and some others which are working fine to view the files.

However, I'd like to be able to edit the movies, and convert them to a friendlier format (ie- plain MPG)that I will be able to send to friends and family that can play in a common player such as Winamp or Windows Media Player.

I've tried Pinnacle and Vegas, but neither of these will open the MP4's. Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Conversion utilities, editors, codecs, etc?

I'm trying to create an electronic christmas card incorporating some of the video clips I have captured. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Go and have a look at www.videohelp.com. If what you want is possible it'll be on there.

Maybe Avidemux ?

Avidemux Win all versions

Never tried it but I use the GPL version on my Archlinux box.

Popular tool is virtualdub... just that it's not that easy to use. But you can use virtualdub to convert it into a format that the big editors (ulead, vegas, premiere) can read/edit.

You can play mp4s in media player (but you might need to download a codec for it), or use VLC or Apple's quicktime as both handle mp4s natively.

Quite a few things will convert mp4 to DVD. (software that came bundled with my DVD burner will do it,) or, as others have said, virtualdub... can pretty much convert it to anything... (although converting lots of times does introduce artifacts).

Alternatively, I'm willing to bet there will be a horde of mp4 editors shortly. After all, it's the native format for the video ipod, and the PSP. It's also about the only way people are going to be able to distribute HD content on regular DVDs. (I know HD-DVD and Bluray are coming - but who's going to buy until the hardware handles both types of disc. So that the choice is pretty irrelevant, like DVD-R and DVD+R)...