Fustrated with video formats

Okay I filmed a whole bunch of stuff today and put it all on my mac and there all .MOD files. Now alot of them are split to. i want to put them on facebook and youtube, and some of them I need to put together to make one video. So I need to convert and combine some.. I really dont wanna pay for anything to do this i need some good free programs ive tried sooo many ive found on google and noting works out

Filmed with what? Can you change the settings on your video camera to save them as .mov or .avi?

Did your video camera come with software to convert the .mod files? Otherwise I've never heard of a .mod format

Judging by the extension - the worst camera made for video editors - a JVC Everio (or other JVC hard drive or ssd model).

If it were me, if the camera is within return period, send it back and get one that records in an industry standard format rather then a company standard format. I don't want to sound mean, but of all of the HD camcorders out there, you got the one that is one of the most Mac unfriendly units.

You can give mpegstreamclip a try. From what I understand it work on the windows side, so the Mac version of Mpegstreamclip may work for mod files too. Honestly, no one really likes to work with mod files

MPEG Streamclip does work quite well. Also, I found that when I connect my Everio and open the files in iMovie directly, the clips download easily into iMovie. If I connect the camera and just drag the .mod files to a folder on my desktop, I have to convert them with MPEG. Strange.

Well, you are not suppose to be dragging the .mod files off of the camera. You are suppose to be using your editor to communicate with the camera.

You may be able to create a disk image and drag ALL of the cameras files there. iMovie would then see the mounted disk image as a mounted camera drive. You use Disk Utility to create such disk images.

JVC Camcorder Follow-up

I work for JVC and would like to try to help.

Actually, JVC is one of the easiest camcorders to use with any recent Apple computer. Please note that .mod files are not unique to JVC are used by several other camcorder manufacturers. The .mod file is really a pretty common method to store standard definition video on the new generation of hard drive and flash memory camcorders.

I have a few tips that may help you, and the good news is that there is probably nothing you have to buy.

Both Apple iMovie '08 and iMovie '09 support JVC (and other manufacturers) .mod files. I can't speak for other brands, but with JVC it is completely automatic. In fact, it is basically a "plug & play" process.

As someone else posted, it is important to use the right method to bring your videos into the computer, which generally means you do that through your editing program, not by simply copying the files from your camcorder to your hard drive.

Here's how to do it:

First, you need to connect your camcorder to your computer via USB. Then, you open your iMovie software. From there, iMovie will recognize the JVC camcorder, and you will get a capture windows which will show you a thumbnail picture representing each clip of video which is recorded on your camcorder.

You can select any individual scene, or everything on the hard drive, and it will be imported to iMovie. From there, editing is easy, and it is very simple to chose how you want to share your video, including uploading to sites like You Tube or Facebook.

It really is this simple. If you have an older version of iMovie, it is worthwhile to upgrade. If your computer is old enough that it is not possible to upgrade to iMovie '08 or iMovie '09, then you either need to look at a new computer, or you can look at one of the file conversion programs that will take a .mod file and turn it into a different format. Using Pixela Capty software to creat a DV format file would be my recommendation, but that is a lot more time consuming.

If you would like any additional info, please post the specific camcorder model # that you have.

I hope this helps.

appreciate you popping in Chris

Chris has been spreading him self around the net lately. Hopefully he can help the JVC users who are having issues.