Rats, I was hoping there was one that was considered a default, sort of an mpg2 style thing. All I know is they want to edit it. My guess is iMovie or whatever it's called. Pinning them down is going to be almost impossible. I don't think they have a clue.

I've been doing some experimenting, though, and I think I do have a clue. :)

Thanks for getting back to me.

Jim

you could render an mp4 out of Vegas that should play fine in QT... but i always use a 3rd party app to create h.264/mp4 files; either After Effects or Handbrake.

this means making a master version of the clients video for yourself, then running that master thru another app to create the h.264.

i'd suggest using Handbrake (free app runs on PC, Mac, Linux).

1) render a high-quality video (uncompressed AVI for instance) to my drive... size doesn't matter as long as your drive can hold it
2) open the file in Handbrake (http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php); find a preset you like and render

3) SETTINGS try "High Profile", set a destination for your render, then click Start.
(check the "Web optimized" button, uncheck the "Large file size"... this should help compatibility with QuickTime.

there's a bunch of youtube/vimeo tutorials out there if u wanna geek out.

(edited for clarity)

My advice to original poster - if you want a piece of the business you have to get schooled on .mov. It is a very important part of the video business at large and professional as well. >MOV is a container , not a specific file type, as pointed out in other posts. Where the .mov is headed, platform, OS Version, etc. has a lot of impact in your decision about what to do next.

Converting from .vob files will be very dirty and poses a question if this project will be worth it. IT can be done, but requires a lot of serious tinkering.

Very interesting. I hadn't realized mov was a container: i.e. it's like .avi. I thought it was more a format type like mpg and wmv. Never particularly liked QT, which is probably my excuse for not educating myself on the container.

It doesn't really matter if it is a worthwhile as far as a final video project goes. This is a situation where the client has a client who had a number of film (from what I can tell by watching it might be 16mm) reels digitized and made into a DVD. Now they want to edit them, but can't work with the .vob files, and brought them to someone else who brought them to one of my clients (predominantly a duplication house, used to make all the cassettes for Sesame Street years ago. Want to talk about bin loop duplication? I did a lot of that. So, I have to convert them to .mov so they can load them into an editor.

Jim

Every generation down from .vob will decrease quality greatly. The only decent editor for directly editing .vob files and keeping quality of the file within about 5% ot its orginal form....IS YOU GUESSED IT - Sony VegasPro - try versions 7, 8, or 9 - I won't comment on 10 or 11 because I don't use them.

If the only editing required is joining VOBs, trimming and sorting, then VideoReDo does a pretty good job. The output would be MPEG2 if you started with DVD VOBs. Only minimal recoding would be necessary where you made cuts, the rest passing through unchanged.

Why not try to convince your client to accept MPEG2.