[Web4lib] quicktime conversion for Windows for video blogging

[K.G. Schneider]

Yesterday at the BlogHer conference (http://www.blogher.org ) I had an
opportunity to make a very brief Quicktime video of danah boyd, who is
speaking at the LITA conference this fall. (You do not want to miss her
talk!) I'd like to vblog (video blog) the recording (and yesterday I
attended a session on vblogging, so am raring to go). I had previously
modified my blog's RSS 2 feeds to support enclosures, since I have played
with podcasting. However, I hit a small snag on the video compression. I use
Windows XP, and I don't have a native Quicktime compression tool, as far as
I know. Avid Free DV, recommended on
http://freevlog.org/wordpress/index.php/category/tutorials/ , mystified me.
Needless to say, Windows Movie Maker won't open Quicktime videos (and
Quicktime Pro or iMovie won't open wmv files, as far as I know). 

Is there some free/open source tool for compressing Quicktime videos as-is
for Web-related use, e.g. vblogging (I don't need to edit the file--a lucky
first effort) or converting Quicktime to .wmv? I'm tempted to just bite the
bullet and for $30 get Quicktime Pro 7, which apparently has an idiot-proof
drop-down menu (when it comes to still and moving images, my patience is not
infinite--EasyShare was made for me). But I felt a frisson of irritation at
the Hatfields and the McCoys for putting barriers into something fairly
basic. 

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com