The Game Dame

I searched high and low for this answer on the web and got sent down a lot of rabbit holes so I’m posting the EASY version of it here for others to find. This article assumes that you have access to both a Windows machine and a Mac.

Suppose you have captured some game footage using Fraps, which saves clips in .AVI format. Now say that you want to use a background audio file for the movie (a song) that happens to be on your Mac. You will soon discover that your AVI video files play on the PC but not in iMovie and your audio files play on the Mac… but neither of them play well together. What to do?

Solution One – Move the song to the PC
It may seem that the easiest thing to do is move the song from the Mac to the PC. If the song you wish to use was ripped from your own CD onto iTunes, you’ll have no problem copying the MP3 file from your Mac to your PC and using it in Windows Movie Maker. However, if you purchased and downloaded the song via iTunes, you’ll find that, even though you can copy the source file to your PC, you cannot play the song on your PC or import it into Windows Movie Maker.

Solution Two – Move the video files to the Mac
So you try to go in the other direction. You want to move your video files to the Mac use iMovie and your preferred soundtrack. Well, iMovie does NOT like the Fraps .AVI format and will refuse to import the clips.

Solution Three – Convert the video files
You finally come to the conclusion that you need to get the Fraps AVI video files converted into something that you can use in iMovie. The easiest thing to do is to convert the Fraps AVI into an older AVI format that the iMovie codecs can read.

Don’t be scared. You don’t need to know what AVI means or what codecs are or the hairy copyright laws involving iTunes songs. Despite what you may have read before you came to this post, converting the movie clips is really very easy! You do not need a technical degree to accomplish the conversion.

Here are the simple steps:

• Download a piece of freeware called VirtualDub onto your PC. Extract the zip file and run the program. It doesn’t need to install; it comes ready to run after you extract it. (Click the image to see which icon to use.)

• Open the folder on your PC where the Fraps .AVI files are. If you didn’t change the Fraps default settings or move the AVI files, they should be in C:Fraps.

• Drag a Fraps video clip into the VirtualDub screen. This opens the clip in VirtualDub. You can also choose to use File | Open video file, but I find dragging easier. (Click the image to see where to drag your file in VirtualDub.)

• On the VirtualDub menu, choose File | Save old format AVI. (Click the image to see the menu choice highlighted.)

• Pick a NEW filename and a folder to save the converted file to. Don’t use the same filename and folder because you’ll overwrite your original clip.

• Off goes VirtualDub to convert your file! You can track the progress on the pop-up. (Click the image to see the progress bar.)

The new clip can be imported into iMovie now! As you might imagine, you’ll be seeing a cute little movie from me soon.