6 Ways To Convert Video Files On a Mac

There are many ways to convert video files from one format to another on your Mac. Often you don't even need to convert at all, but just simply change the file extension.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you several different ways to convert video files on your Mac. 
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Now if you're looking to convert video files on your Mac there are several different ways to do it. It really depends on what you're trying to do and why. 
For instance here I've got a variety of different video files. Notice how some of them are .mov files and some are .mp4 files. In fact most of these are the same kind of video. MPEG video compressed with H264 compression. But they have different file extensions. So it is important to understand something about video files particularly ones with the extensions .mov, .MP4, and .M4V. These are all files that can contain in them H264 compressed MPEG video. That usually what they've got. File extension isn't as important as what is inside. Think of the file extension as the type of envelope you may get with some papers in it. You can get a small white envelope, a large manila envelope, a plastic folder, maybe a cardboard box. They all can contain the same papers. It doesn't matter what the container is. It's what is inside that is most important. These three file extensions are kind of like kinds of envelopes. They can encapsulate the same thing. 
So for instance one of the most common reasons that people maybe watching this video is that they need to upload or send video in a specific format to somebody or some website or server and they are told that they need to provide MP4 files. However what they really need to provide is H264 compressed MPEG video. The file extension isn't as important. So they may have a .mov file like this one. If I open it up by double clicking it and it opens up in Quick Time Player and I go to Window and Show Movie Inspector I can see video format and audio format because they are two different tracks inside encapsulated in this file. The video format is H264 which is a type of MPEG video file. That's what is needed. The fact that it is named .mov is really irrelevant because you could simply go in and change the extension here to MP4. Anytime you change an extension you're going to get a warning. You say sure, let's do it, and if you try to play this video now it plays just like before. I'm doing it there using Quick Look. If you send it to somebody, maybe somebody who said the .mov file didn't work now it may just work for them because the system they're using doesn't understand that a .mov file is basically the same thing.  
So if your problem is that you need to convert an MOV or M4V file to MP4, first try just changing the file extension. That may allow you to upload it or the other person to view it just fine without ever having to convert the video. This will probably solve the video conversion problem for half the people that are watching this without actually even converting the file. Just basically renaming it. 
But sometimes you do need to actually convert the file. For instance if I look at this one, if I double click on it and open up in Quick Time Player, use Command i to get that Inspector, note the video format is HEVC which is a fairly new format that Apple uses. Sending this file, no matter what the extension is to somebody else, say using an older Windows machine, they may not be able to play the file at all. So you need to convert it. Now, Quick Time Player is all you need in this case. So using Quick Time Player you can go to File, and Export As, not Save but Export As. Choose the size. So it is the main thing that you do with Quick Time Player is you can convert down in size. So I can convert to say 720P and this will allow me to have a much smaller video because it's only 720 pixels vertically instead of the 4K video which is 2160 pixels vertical. 
But even if I just stick with what the video is now, 4K, notice that now I've got the ability to convert from HEVC I can go down to the older H264 MPEG video which will make it more compatible for people. It is going to Save this out as a MOV file, that's what the original is saved as, and once I get the finished one right here I can actually go in and change the file extension just like I showed before. Now this works perfectly fine as a .mp4 file and I can send it, upload it, or do whatever I need with it. 
Now sometimes you need more than that. Sometimes you have a file, maybe, that is not working if you try to import it into iMovie, for instance, and you can use Quick Time Player for that as well. You can open up a variety of different formats in Quick Time Player to play them and Export them. So, just using this same technique I just showed you before you can open up a file that's not an MPEG 4 file if it opens up in Quick Time Player and allows you to play it in Quick Time Player you can export it as a H264 MPEG file that will then work in iMovie and other apps. So QuickTime Player can be your general purpose video conversion app. 
If you need more than what Quick Time Player provides then you've got to go to another app. If you want to figure out like what's the big one, what's the official kind of video conversion app, well Apple actually has one. It's called Compressor. It's been around for a long time and you can get it in The App Store. It costs a little bit but it does allow you to convert from a lot of different formats to allow other formats with tons of detail. So more than just choosing the size. You can actually choose the compression rate, you can choose different video codex, all sorts of things. 
So here's Compressor in action. I can take, say, this video right here and drop it in there. Then I can reveal the Sidebar here. I can pick a Format or Add a Custom Format. So I can create a preset here. Change the format say to an MPEG4 file, like that. With this selected I can click here and I can actually change all sorts of different things about exactly how the video is saved and the different formats that are used, and compression rates and all that for video and for audio as well. Then I can drag this to here saying I want to covert this video to this format that I have created. Hit Start Batch and it will convert this video file for me. There is a pretty steep learning curve to use Compressor. It is a pretty highly technical app. 
So if you want something simpler you can search for Convert Video in The App Store and a variety of different apps will appear. A lot of them are Free but have in-app purchases for more advanced features. Or they are Free and have ads in them. Things like that. I certainly haven't gone through and done a comprehensive review on any of these but I have no doubt that they all work at some level to convert different video files. For instance I randomly picked this one here and if I open it up you can see I can just drag and drop a video file in it. It will convert all sorts of files. Even ones that Quick Time Player doesn't do. So, for instance a MKV file is common one that people really can't convert with Quick Time Player. You can drag and drop this one in here and then pick the format that you want and hit Convert. Kind of annoyingly sends it into the TV App but you can easily go to the file itself and kind of pull it out afterwards. You can see I've converted the MKV file to a MP4 file without too much difficulty. 
Another app that has been around for a long time, predating The Mac App Store is one called VLC which is generally used as video player to be able to cue up a bunch of videos or even audio and play them. But it has a conversion feature. So I"m going to run VLC and it is going to start off by giving this Player Window here. But I'm not even going to use that. I'm going to Close that and just go to File, Convert/Stream. Here I can drop-in a file, like this one, and then select what I want it to convert to. Customize it. I can Save it as a file. Pick a location. We'll just save it back to that same directory. Hit Save and then Save Here and it will convert it to that format. I find though that it is a little hit-or-miss especially with MKV files and such as to whether it actually converts it. It does take a long time with very little feedback. So you simply have to wait for the file conversion to finish and you're not really sure when that actually happens. So VLC is another tool to try but it may or may not work in your situation. 
Another option is that there are websites that will convert video. You upload your video to the website and then you download the new converted version. Of course a lot of them are filled with ads. A lot of them ask you to signup in advance. A lot of them will have names that you don't really recognize. So I want to mention this as an option but personally I wouldn't trust most of these sites with my video content. However, there are some known names on here. For instance here is Adobe. They have a Quick Site as long as you have a free Adobe Account you can upload video to Adobe Express and download a converted version from them. Since so many of us use other Adobe Apps and have Adobe Accounts at the site for that anyway that's a decent option there. 
So to sum up in a lot of cases you may not need to convert a video file at all particularly if it is a dot MOV or dot M4V file. You may just be able to change file names to dot MP4 and that may work for your situation. In most other cases opening the video in Quick Time Player, if you can open it and can play it in Quick Time Player you can Export it from Quick Time Player in a more standard format. If that doesn't work you can try either Apple's Compressor App or a third party app in The App Store, or the VLC App. Plus if you like using web apps instead there are a variety of web apps that will convert video files too. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 6 Responses to “6 Ways To Convert Video Files On a Mac”

Carol Brunger

7 months ago

Thank you so much for this video Gary. It answers so many questions.

Christian Nelson

So much great information here in this video...no wasted time, just Gary explaining stuff I've often wondered about. One of the best things about Gary's videos is that he is always right...his information is reliable...*and* you can tell just by the way he talks that he actually knows what he's talking about. He doesn't fumble around, doesn't sound like he's just regurgitating something he read somewhere. Gary just might be the eighth wonder of the world.

jun

Thanks Gary for the awesome video! one query : I bought a brand new USB drive (2TB) (exFAT format). When I copied few movies files(.mkv) to it, it's strange. File gets copied normally. But, when I play it in VLC, few can play it normally, but if I try to click ahead in navigation bar to let's say to timeline 00:25 or 01:00, it gets stuck. But while playing on my Mac, I could navigate to anywhere with hardly 1sec delay. And, few .mkv files can't even play from this USB drive. DOC/PDF/XLSX are ok

Gary Rosenzweig

jun: Could be because the drive is so much slower than your internal one, plus the USB connection is much slower too. It may improve if you use a better video format, or if the drive was formatted for Mac instead of old Windows.

Christy Sheffield Sanford

4 months ago

Excellent, meaning I can understand most of what you say. I opened my Quicktime Player (converted file from Keynote) and went to export, but the 4K and 1080p are not options. I made the Keynote for 16:9, so not sure what's wrong. I want to put it on Vimeo like all my others that work fine, and I want to send it to contests. My converter app stopped working. Sonoma 14.1.2.
Thank you, Gary.

Christy: You can't go "up" from something lower to 1080 or 4K. If you are exporting from Keynote, just export with the settings you want and use that. No need to convert.

6 Ways To Convert Video Files On a Mac

Comments: 6 Responses to “6 Ways To Convert Video Files On a Mac”

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