What is the best free video converter for the Mac to turn .MOV files into .MP4? I have an SJCAM SJ4000 wifi and I would like to use GoPro Studio to edit the videos. If anyone has specifics on how to do that that would be awesome too!
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Best Free Video Converter?
- Thread starter tardman91
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No need for a converter.
GoPro Studio accepts the MOV files in the STEP 1 process via the IMPORT NEW FILES button.
Once they are visible on the left, you have to drag one clip at a time to the middle window to make in and out points (a bit cumbersome, but forces one to look at the footage), and then add the clip to the conversion list.
That creates new clips in the Movies folder inside your home folder, those new clips are converted to .mov using the CineForm High-Definition (HD) wavelet codec, which makes the conversion from MOV to MP4 unnecessary.
GoPro Studio accepts the MOV files in the STEP 1 process via the IMPORT NEW FILES button.
Once they are visible on the left, you have to drag one clip at a time to the middle window to make in and out points (a bit cumbersome, but forces one to look at the footage), and then add the clip to the conversion list.
That creates new clips in the Movies folder inside your home folder, those new clips are converted to .mov using the CineForm High-Definition (HD) wavelet codec, which makes the conversion from MOV to MP4 unnecessary.
Thanks for that info. I discovered that for myself this afternoon after I shot some footage. From what I was reading online last night there seems to be a lot of confusion and misinformation out there about the topic. I'm glad it was super simple.
I will add my vote for Handbrake. File sizes are much smaller than I get with Compressor. I put together classes for work which are voiceovers, talking heads, and powerpoint slides. There is no reason a 20 minute clip should be 140-500 megs like that. Handbrake gets it into the much more reasonable 20 meg range.
The OP does not need further compression for editing, as the acquired footage is already compressed using the same codec as HandBrake uses. And during GoPro Studio import it will get converted to an editing friendly format. After that compression might be needed, but 16 KB/s for video (20 MB for 20 minute clip = 1 MB for 1 minute = 16 KB for 1 second) is bad, as that is the data rate of a 128 Kbps MP3 file, without video.
A much better data rate would be 1 to 4 Mbps, which is 128 KB/s to 512 KB/s, which again depends on the resolution.
Normally, I would agree with you, but note that I said the videos were mostly powerpoint slides. In some cases they are ALL power point slides. Because my "video" changes at a frame a minute or so, 16KB/s IS ok.
Since this thread did not mention slides by the OP, I didn't think about that specific user case, as there is another thread about recording university lectures, but not with slides.
For your stated user case it might be okay, but the OP does record live footage.
But if Handbrake compresses faster and more efficiently than Compressor (and with fewer errors), then it compresses faster and more efficiently, right? With gas prices as high as they are, how far were you planning to go to avoid the point?
Which point?
The OP wanted to convert footage in order to import into GoPro Studio, which turned out to be unnecessary.
Compressor was not talked about in this thread. Maybe you are confusing this thread with another?
As to HB being fast, well, fast is not always the best way, especially when one converts H264 mov to H264 MP4, as that should be a simple muxing job, and no actual transcoding job.
To then transcode the H264 MP4 to a CineForm mov via GoPro Studio adds a further generation, which should make it obvious, that HB is not needed.
If you're talking about an entirely different topic, which seems to be the situation right now, I'm sorry for not seeing it.
The point: Handbrake is a fast and efficient (and free) means of converting video. It sometimes makes better choices than Compressor (which is Apple's pro tool for converting video types).
The difference between muxing and conversion is important but not especially relevant when you can't import the format. If you have been importing video long enough, to know the difference, then you have ran into the problem yourself.
Since the thread's problem had been solved two day before your comment, a comment which did not take into account the OP's use of LIVE FOOTAGE and not presentation slides, your comment seemed out of place.
While HandBrake is good for many tasks, it is not always suited best, especially not for video editing, as transcoding H264 to H264 is like copying a tape to another tape and then using the copy to ingest.
As GoPro Studio is capable of importing the .MOV H.264 files of the OP's camera, HB is not needed.
As to Compressor, I rarely use it, maybe for DVD production due to its presets, but I am using Media Encoder for most transcoding jobs or if that fails MPEG Streamclip. HandBrake is only involved for clips send to clients in a hurry (if I cannot wait the five more minutes ME would take).
