Free online RTF to AVI converter

A document workflow may require an AVI file for playback or video editing, even when the source is a formatted RTF document. Because RTF stores text and page layout rather than moving images, conversion renders its pages as still frames and assembles them into a video.

What the RTF format is

RTF (Rich Text Format) stores formatted text, basic page layout, and document elements such as tables. WordPad, Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, and other word processors can create or open RTF files. It is commonly used when a document needs to be shared between word-processing programs.

What the AVI format is

AVI (Audio Video Interleave) is a video container that can hold video and audio streams. It is used by some desktop editing and playback software and supports several video codecs; compatibility depends on the codec inside the file. An AVI made from RTF pages is effectively a page-by-page video, not an editable word-processing document.

How to convert RTF to AVI

Online on 101convert.com

1. Open the RTF-to-AVI converter page and upload the file. The page allows batch conversion; check its per-file size limit.
2. Set show each page for to choose how long each document page appears.
3. Start the conversion, then download the AVI file.

Offline with desktop software

A free workflow on Linux, macOS, or Windows uses LibreOffice to render the RTF as PDF, Poppler’s pdftoppm to make page images, and FFmpeg to encode those images as AVI. Install all three programs, then run these commands in a shell from the folder containing document.rtf:

mkdir -p work
libreoffice --headless --convert-to pdf --outdir work document.rtf
pdftoppm -png -r 150 work/document.pdf work/page
ffmpeg -framerate 1/5 -start_number 1 -i work/page-%d.png -r 30 -c:v mpeg4 -q:v 5 -pix_fmt yuv420p output.avi

The example holds each rendered page for five seconds and encodes a 30-fps AVI. Change 1/5 to a different reciprocal duration, such as 1/3 for three seconds per page. The command assumes LibreOffice names the PDF document.pdf; if it uses a different name, adjust the PDF path.

Quality and limitations

LibreOffice’s rendering can differ from the original program if fonts or layout features are unavailable, so check the PDF before encoding. The -r 150 setting controls page-image resolution; increase it for sharper small text, at the cost of larger video frames. This workflow produces silent video with no transitions, and AVI playback compatibility depends on the player supporting the MPEG-4 video codec.