Convert from MOV to MP4 Container format
Solution 1
I don't want to touch the actual quality of the video I want the conversion to be as fast as possible.
Use FFmpeg with -c copy
to just copy the contained data (video, audio, subtitles).
ffmpeg -i file.mov -c copy out.mp4
ffmpeg -i file.mov -c copy out.mkv
If there are more than one video / audio / subtitle stream, and you want to copy all, use:
ffmpeg -i file.mov -c copy -map 0 out.mp4
The MOV container is compatible to MP4 and it supports all video and audio bitstreams that MKV supports as well. You can simply copy the video and audio data to the output container without touching the raw bit streams.
This will be the fastest conversion, since it actually doesn't encode anything—and you'll retain the quality of the original.
Download and install FFmpeg:
- On macOS/Linux through Homebrew with
brew install ffmpeg
or a static build from the download page - On Linux via static build from https://ffmpeg.org/download.html, or also via Homebrew
Solution 2
VLC allows you to switch containers.
Select Media->Convert/Save, select files, Convert->Save, click "Create New Profile" icon, change container, mark keep original video and audio tracks.
Solution 3
You can re-pack MOV to MKV easily with mkvtoolnix. It has both command-line and GUI tools for Windows and Linux:
mkvmerge -o output.mkv input.mov
It just changes the container, without recoding anything. You said "more respecatble format like mp4, so I suppose MKV would work for you.
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Jeremy Edwards
I've heard of Compute Engine, .NET, and Android. I work at Google as a Software Engineer. I currently work on Google Compute Engine. The answers I post are of my own opinion, they may be incorrect or outdated and do not reflect those of my employer.
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Jeremy Edwards almost 2 years
I have a digital camera that records nice 1080p H.264 format but unfortunately it uses the MOV container format. Basically I have nothing but the camera and VLC that play this format natively.
Is there a tool out there to convert the video to a format by just replacing the container format? That'd be a lot faster as the encoding is perfectly fine.
It'd be nice to select the folder and convert everything over to a more respectable container format like MP4.
I don't want to touch the actual quality of the video I want the conversion to be as fast as possible.
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Admin over 12 yearsRelated: How can I convert .mov to mp4?
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Syaiful Nizam Yahya over 9 yearsThe easiest way to remux to mp4. Thanks.
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Royi over 7 yearsFor some reason it doesn't work on
qtrle
videos on Windows, Any idea? -
Kent Kruckeberg almost 5 yearsA caution. If the audio stream is not one allowed by the mp4 standard, then this won't work as I have found out and spent over an hour until finding out why.I was trying to use VLC to re-containerize some .mov files from a Rove dash cam and the audio would be lost. I couldn't figure out why until sleuthing and finding that the dash cam uses sowt (a pcm type of encoded audio) and this is not one of the supported audio stream types for mp4. OBS studio also failed to convert it and neither it nor VLC tells you why unless you know how to look.