AVI was the standard video file for years: DivX and Xvid films, camera clips in Motion JPEG, screen recordings and old home videos. Today many phones, TVs and websites don't play it. Converting to MP4 with H.264 video and AAC sound makes these files play almost anywhere.
How to convert AVI to MP4
- Upload the AVI file (up to 2 GB).
- Keep Convert to: MP4. Choose a quality for the re-encoded video: Balanced looks like the original, High keeps more detail in a larger file.
- Download the MP4.
What is re-encoded
AVI files usually contain video that MP4 players don't handle:
- DivX, Xvid and other MPEG-4 Part 2 video, Microsoft MPEG-4, Motion JPEG, Cinepak and similar codecs are re-encoded to H.264.
- H.264 video inside an AVI is copied unchanged into the MP4.
- MP3 sound, the most common in AVI files, is copied. AC-3, PCM and other sound is re-encoded to AAC.
Pixels that are not square (common in DV and TV captures) are made square, and interlaced video is deinterlaced, so the MP4 has the right shape and no combing lines in every player.
Tips
- If the AVI has more than one sound track (for example two languages), all of them are kept.
- Old AVI files are often small in resolution. They are never enlarged; the MP4 keeps the original size.
- A damaged AVI (for example a download that stopped early) may not convert completely. The result says so when the file can't be read.
- Re-encoding takes time: the limit is about 25 minutes of 1080p video, and much longer for the small videos typical of AVI files.
More about what this tool reads and writes: Video Converter.