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I Have A Tar file and was wondering how, if possible, to convert it to avi or something burnable. Please help

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by jbennet

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Quick heads-up: a .tar is an archive format, not a video file. is right that it is similar to a .zip. You do not convert the .tar itself to .avi; first extract the archive and see what files are inside (there may or may not be a video). You can burn the .tar as a data disc, but a standalone DVD player will not play it as a movie. TAR basics are covered in the GNU tar manual.

To inspect or extract it on macOS/Linux:

# list contents
tar -tf file.tar
tar -tzf file.tar.gz   # if it is .tar.gz or .tgz

# extract
tar -xf file.tar
tar -xzf file.tar.gz

On Windows, 7-Zip can open .tar and .tar.gz archives if you prefer a GUI: 7-Zip. That complements ’s suggestion.

After extraction, if you find a real video (e.g., .mp4, .mkv) and you truly need AVI, you can transcode with FFmpeg. Example:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v mpeg4 -q:v 3 -c:a mp3 -b:a 192k output.avi

This uses an AVI-friendly MPEG-4 video codec and MP3 audio. Adjust -q:v (lower is higher quality) and -b:a as needed. FFmpeg usage details: FFmpeg docs.

Two quick tips:

  • If your goal is a movie DVD that plays in older DVD players, you must author a DVD-Video (MPEG-2 + VIDEO_TS structure), not just burn an AVI.
  • If you only want to store the files, do not convert; burn the original extracted video to avoid quality loss.

Recommended Answers

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Member Avatar for ses5909

a tar is a group of files. very similar to a zip file. You can burn it just fine.

Member Avatar for jbennet

you could use winrar to extract it

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