I have 20 video files each abpout 5 minutes long. I need to merge them together and then edit them by cutting out unnecessary parts. I used a sony video camera and videod the footage in MPEG2 format. I used my friend's camera. Now I have the files on my laptop. When I dragged those files onto windows movie maker it would not accept them so i converted them to avi hoping that it would work but it didn't! So I tried converting to wmv. No luck either. Windows movie maker would not accept them. It says 'unspecified error'

What am I doing wrong? Ultimately I want to slice the video to make a 7 minute video so that I can upload it to youtube

Any ideas?

I have 20 video files each abpout 5 minutes long. I need to merge them together and then edit them by cutting out unnecessary parts. I used a sony video camera and videod the footage in MPEG2 format. I used my friend's camera. Now I have the files on my laptop. When I dragged those files onto windows movie maker it would not accept them so i converted them to avi hoping that it would work but it didn't! So I tried converting to wmv. No luck either. Windows movie maker would not accept them. It says 'unspecified error'

What am I doing wrong? Ultimately I want to slice the video to make a 7 minute video so that I can upload it to youtube

Any ideas?

This two programs are great

Quick Media Converter

From:

http://www.cocoonsoftware.com/

And if one file has error I use this one

super@

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

both programs are free

AVI is a movie container rather than a codec (Google the difference). Possibly the main problem is that the original codec of these movie clips is not supported by Windows Movie Maker, and if that is the case then changing the container won't help, you'll need to do a full re-encoding of the file.

Personally I use Media Coder for all types of conversions, but I don't know whether it will help you make the files acceptable for Windows Movie Maker or not.

Still, might be worth a shot as it does conversions between all manner of formats and is 100% free. (The developer asks you to donate if you like it, but there is no need to do so if you don't want to.)

To analyze your movie files in depth I recommend you to download MediaInfo. It is a free tool that analyzes all types of media files for technical data. Very useful and the right tool to use if you need to troubleshoot on online forums, because people who know their stuff will often be able to see what the problem is if you give them a log of the file.

You may need Sony MovieShaker software that should have come with the camera.

Which Sony camera did you use? If its a Sony camera that uses micromv format (micro size tape) then it will require MovieShaker to download to hard drive and a program called mmv2mpg for converting to standard mpeg 2 format after its on the hard drive. You should then be able to use any editor program.

Virtualdub can join/edit avis.

Don't convert and lose quality. Use an MPEG2 editor. Found here.