How to Open up Canon Rebel T3i(600D)/T5i(700D) footage in Windows Movie Maker

With the release of the Canon T5i, the market for entry level dSLRs is getting a bit crowded. Will you upgrade your old Canon T3i to the newest model or just keep it? Well, both Canon Rebel T5i and T3i (EOS 700D/600D) is easy-to-use that can capture videos saved in 1920 x 1080 (30, 25, 24 fps) with H.264 as video codec and stereo sound. While, this MOV video format came from Canon is a FULL HD format that is highly compressed, so it can not be imported and edited on most of editing software on Windows, like Adobe Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas and Windows Movie Maker. And in this page, we focus on Canon T3i/T5i to Windows Movie Maker importing issue and fix.

Q1: Import Canon T3i video clips into Windows Movie Maker

“I recently purchased the canon rebel t3i and is starting to get into film making. I just shot my first video and am trying to edit it by using the windows movie maker. But every time i try to import a video clip from the canon rebel t3i nothing comes up on the windows movie maker screen why is this happening please help!!!”

Q2: Upload Canon T5i vides to WMM

“I want to upload video clips from my Canon T5i to windows movie maker to make a short bike edit but it pops up with a weird error message about the wrong codec.”

Canon T3i/T5i, just like all other Rebels that do video, records in the .mov format. That's an Apple format in fact. Windows Movie Maker won't read this format well. Plus, Canon’s EOS digital SLRs use sophisticated H.264 compression method for recording video files. The H.264 codec is intended for playing back video for the end user. This means that like most video codecs it uses some fancy tricks to minimize file size – one of these tricks is that it doesn’t actually store the information for each frame. So, for editing, however, this is a nightmare. The only alternative is to convert Canon T3i/T5i MOV to Windows Movie Maker fully compatible WMV, AVI. And you'll need conversion software to do that.

Brorsoft Video Converter, a powerful video converter, player and editor is the best choice for you here. With it, you can transcode Canon T3i, T5i MOV files to a more editing-friendly format for Windows Movie Maker as well as Avid Media Composer, Premiere Pro, Vegas Pro, Pinnacle etc. non-linear editing systems without quality loss. What’s more, this video app can also help you convert common videos like MKV, AVI, WMV, FLV, F4V, VOB, MPG and more. Download the software and start conversion.

Download Canon H.264 MOV Converter:

READ MORE: Canon T5i to iMovie | Canon T5i to Final Cut Pro

Guide: Transcoding Canon T3i, T5i MOV footage for Windows Movie Maker

Step 1: Transfer the h.264 encoded .mov files from Canon T3i/T5i to your PC. Run the best Canon MOV Converter, and click the "Add" button to load the video clips. If you want to merge MOV clips, just need to check the “Merge into one” box.

Step 2: Hit the Format box and select HD Video -->WMV HD(*.wmv) on the dropdown menu as output format. Besides, you can also choose Divx HD(*.avi) as output if you have not installed the .wmv codec.

Step 3: Click the “Settings” button and customize proper video/ audio parameters if necessary. The screen shot listed below is our recommendation on the settings for you.

Step 4: Click the convert button on the main interface to start converting Canon T3i/T5i footage to WMV/AVI for editing in Window Movie Maker.

All these are the basics of getting your Canon Rebels video off the camera to Windows Movie Maker. When the conversion is completed, click Open to locate the folder where you put the converted files. Now transfer the output WMV files to Window Movie Maker and then you can edit Canon T3i/T5i MOV recordings without any issue.