MP4 to AVI — Convert Online for Free
Convert MP4 to AVI right in your browser for older players, TVs and DVD hardware. Nothing is uploaded to a server.
Drag and drop your file here or click to select
About the conversion
This direction is not about quality but about older hardware: DVD players, car stereos, TVs and previous-generation media players often understand only AVI with DivX or XviD, and a modern MP4 with H.264 simply will not start on them.
Let us be straight: this is the one pair in the set where a full re-encode is unavoidable. We convert the video to MPEG-4 and the audio to MP3, because that is the combination old hardware expects. So this conversion takes longer than the others and the resulting file is usually bigger than the source. That is the price of compatibility, and there is no way around it.
The file is processed in your browser on your own device and is never uploaded — not to our server, not anywhere else. On the first run the browser downloads the engine once (~32 MB) and takes it from cache afterwards.
Frequently asked questions
Why does MP4 to AVI take longer than other formats?
Because the container cannot simply be swapped. The old hardware that AVI is needed for does not understand the H.264 codec from MP4, so the video has to be re-encoded to MPEG-4 — always slower than moving a track across.
Why is the AVI bigger than the original MP4?
That is expected. The MPEG-4 codec old players accept compresses noticeably worse than modern H.264, so at comparable quality the file comes out heavier. The gain here is not size but the fact that the video plays at all.
Will quality suffer?
A small loss is unavoidable because the video is re-compressed. We keep the settings so the difference is invisible on an ordinary screen, but if quality is critical it is worth keeping the MP4 original.
What is AVI still used for today?
Mostly for hardware made before the industry moved to H.264: DVD and media players, car stereos, older TVs, plus some editing and teaching software that has not been updated in years.
Is the video uploaded to a server?
No, the re-encode runs right in your browser on your own device.