0

Possible Duplicate:
Batch convert videos from MPG to AVI

My iPhone records videos in Apple's MOV format. I do all my media management on a PC where MOV is cumbersome. I would like to convert all my existing MOV files to a Windows-friendly format.

  • Should be a one-click tool; I want to do this for all the video files, and it's not feasible to load each individual file into a video-editing program and manually "save as" another format. I want to enqueue lots of files at once and then come back a day later and have the target files.
  • Should be lossless, or at least as lossless as possible.
  • Target format can be AVI, MP4, or anything similarly compatible.
1
  • Isn't the file from the iPhone already a MP4 container (with a mov extension) with MPEG-4 AVC video? Since I could not find reliable information, you should check what kind of container and audio/video format your source files have, e.g. unsing mediainfo.sourceforge.net (assuming you use Windows). Without this information it is hard to tell if lossless conversion is possible and to recommend the best conversion settings. Jul 15, 2012 at 12:07

3 Answers 3

4

Windows, without appropriate codec libraries, doesn't support anything useful apart from MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video. If you were to convert your iPhone videos to that format, you'd lose a lot of quality and the files would be huge.

If you install codec libraries like CCCP, then Windows should be able to play almost any video on its own. This would mean that you don't have to re-convert your h.264 iPhone videos – because re-encoding is never good.

If the MOV container is what irks you (or, Windows), then you could use MP4Box to wrap it to an MP4 container. I don't think this will heavily increase compatibility, but it's worth a shot. Also, it won't re-encode the video and audio bitstreams, it'll just change the container format. It's rather easy to wrap this is in a batch file for all videos, I guess.

mp4box -add input.mov -new output.mp4

Again, I don't see a lot of value in re-encoding videos to an old codec just so Windows supports it out of the box. That's like opening your door with a sledge hammer just because you forgot to install a doorknob.

2
  • +1 for remuxing not transcoding.
    – James
    Jul 17, 2012 at 22:23
  • You're right, I didn't intend to do reencoding but I wasn't clear on the terms or possibilities. What I want is to have anything that isn't MOV so that my non-Apple apps can play them. Aug 27, 2012 at 7:53
1

Use Total video Converter http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Encoders-Converter-DIVX-Related/Total-Video-Converter.shtml

2
  • Which format do you recommend the OP should convert his videos to? Which video codec? What settings should they choose so as not to lose quality?
    – slhck
    Jul 15, 2012 at 13:31
  • use mkv format and h.264 as codec.
    – arundevma
    Jul 16, 2012 at 3:07
0

It looks like this answer solves it:

SUPER © (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) can do it. One of its features is multiple batch file processing by simple file drag and drop, and it's freeware.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .