I am currently running an iMAC on High Sierra and have MBPs that I will be upgrading to Catalina. I am trying to get all my videos in one place before upgrading. This includes videos already in iMovie as well as those saved as files from my old camcorder, DSLR, etc. Is it better to save my movies as .mov or .m4v or .mp4 for future use? It looks like the .mov are MUCH larger files. These are mainly baby videos etc so want to keep them accessible and backed up going forward
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Kathleen
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Save Videos As .mov or .mp4?
Comments: 5 Responses to “Save Videos As .mov or .mp4?”
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Those are just file extensions. It is what is inside that matters. For instance, you could save the video as h264 compression and various bit rates and settings and save the file as something any of those three extensions. They are mostly interchangeable.
See https://macmost.com/understanding-mac-file-extensions.html
So what you should probably do is use something that is h264 and a bitrate that fits what you want. The more bits you put in each second, the larger the file size but the better the quality. So you have to experiment and decide for yourself what you want.
As for an extension, using mp4 probably makes the most sense. It is the most generic of the three.
Thanks for your quick reply Gary. Basically I’m trying to do as you suggest and get all my videos in 1 spot Currently they are in iMovie, photos, etc I want to get them backed up outside these programs so just trying to figure out whether to ‘share’ as mov or mp4 or both I have room to store but want to be able to view via my Apple TV etc
Kathleen:For now I would export out of Photos as "original" to get the actual video you started with. Export out of iMovie as the highest resolution you can for each project (iMovie doesn't give you many options). Then later you can open in QuickTime Player and export specifically for Apple TV if you find the originals don't work.
You can't solve this one!:
I made a iMovie video on my iMac and tried to watch it on my Apple TV 4K. Its used to be simple with iTunes and "sharing on" but Apple has eliminated that now with Catalina. Apparently there is no simple way to do this....unless you know of one.
Pete: Home Sharing is now at System Preferences, Sharing, Media Sharing. You'd put your videos in the library in the TV app.