3GP to AVI: Convert Video from 3GP(3GP Mobile Video) to AVI(Audio Video Interleaved) with River Past Video Cleaner, 3GP2AVI converter, conversion

What is 3GP?

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3G/3GPP) is a collaboration agreement that was established in December 1998. The 3GPP and 3GPP2 specifications call out specific types of media that can exist in .3gp and .3g2 files.

Once you move a video from cell phone to your PC, the easiest way to play it is to use Apple's QuickTime Player.

In general, if a cell phone record a 3g2 video, it should conform to the 3G2 standard. However, a cell phone may not has the ability to play all variety of 3G2 videos due to limited codec support on the cell. Thus, it is easy to convert a cell phone 3G2 to a video format playable on a computer, but it is not so easy to convert a PC video to a 3G2 which is compatible with your particular brand of cell phone.

To convert from 3GP video to other formats with River Past software, please have Apple QuickTime installed.

What is AVI?

Defined by Microsoft, AVI stands for Audio Video Interleave. It is a special case of the RIFF (Resource Interchange File Format). AVI is the most common format for audio/video data on the PC.

AVI is Microsoft's response to Apple's QuickTime technology. Early AVI files were limited on choice of video and audio codecs, quality, and resolution. However, with the introduction of DirectShow, AVI became a very flexible and powerful architecture. Some newer codecs including DivX and XviD enable AVI files to have similar or even better quality than DVD.

Launch River Past Video Cleaner

Once River Past Video Cleaner is installed properly, launch Video Cleaner.

Add File

Click on the "Add File" button on the tool bar. The standard file open dialog appears. Select "3GPP/3GPP2 - Mobile Phone Video (*.3gp;*.3g2)" in its "Files of type" combo box.

Select the file you want to convert and click "Open". The file will be added to the conversion file list.

Note: To convert from 3GPP/3GPP2 files, you must have Apple QuickTime installed.

If you are not able to add the file, please verify your QuickTime installation since we use QuickTime to decode 3GP video. Try to play the file in QT Player.

If QT Player cannot play the file, you will need to reinstall QuickTime.

River Past Video Cleaner

Select output format

Use the setting panel on the bottom of the window to control the output format. Click on the toggle to the left of the "Output Format" label to expand the panel. Select "AVI - Audio Video Interleave" as the "File Type".

Change Video Settings

Click on the toggle to the left of the "Video Settings" label to expand the panel.

Select "Specify" under "Size" and/or "Frame rate" to enter the video resolution and/or frame rate.

You can change the compressor, quality, size, and frame rate of the video.

The size of the AVI file depend a lot on the chosen video compressor. Microsoft ships some standard codecs with Windows, including MJPEG, Microsoft Video 1 and Cinepak. Those are old codecs and are not very efficient. It is not uncommon that your AVI files will be 10x to 50x bigger than your original files if you are converting from DIVX, MOV, MPEG, WMV or anything encoded with a MPEG based codec.

You can use additional codecs from Microsoft or third party codecs to reduce the file size. DivX and Xvid are two excellent third party codecs, which produces video with excellent quality with smaller file size. Both of them are based on MPEG-4, and both can be used with AVI file format.

However, if you use any non-standard codecs for the AVI file, please keep in mind that the viewer of the video must have the codecs installed on their PC too, and your file may not be compatible with all video editing software.

The file size also depend on the "Quality" setting. Move the slider to the left for smaller file size, at the expense of video quality.

Change Audio Settings

Click on the toggle to the left of the "Audio Settings" label to expand the panel.

Select the audio compressor for the conversion. Depending on the compressor, you may also change the sample rate, channel (stereo or mono), resolution, and bitrate.

Do not use "MPEG Layer-3" as the audio compressor. It does not work correctly in video files and often causes the conversion to abort in the middle. If you prefer to have MP3 audio in the AVI file, download lame_enc.dll instead.