How does one make an MP4?

If you do have ffmpeg, you can re-wrap the Quicktime export into an MP4 without recompressing anything.

ffmpeg -i FlameExportedH264.mov -codec:v copy -codec:a copy Output.mp4

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Its become my goto swiss army knife for all conversions I absolutely love it

Is that the same as renaming the extension on the file from .mov to .mp4

Not exactly, but maybe not in a way that actually matters for your use case.

The MP4 container is based on the Quicktime MOV container structure, but there are various data chunks that could be found in a MOV that MP4 doesn’t define or support (like timecode) and a strict player or some automated QC app could throw up an error. The headers are slightly different, but the overall structure is the same (sequential chunks of data tagged with a type ID and a length to tell you where the chunk ends and the next chunk begins.)

I’d say most video players are pretty tolerant, and the nature of the MOV structure is such that if you encounter a data chunk with a type you don’t understand, you just skip it and go on to the next chunk… so even if your renamed MOV has some extra chunks specific to Quicktimes, most apps don’t really care.

Soooo, if renaming works for where/whoever you’re sending files to, great! If not you can always try rewrapping it as a “proper” MP4 which pretty much goes as fast as you can read and write to your disks.

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You are a wealth of information. Thank you for explaining it so well.

While we’re on the subject, does anyone feel like messing with this? You’ll need 2022 and ffmpeg installed. It’s a mix of Autodesk’s encode selection script, Mike V’s GUI, and my ability to cut and paste. It’s customized for our facility, but you can change a few paths if you search for /Volumes/vfx. I also commented out the section where it saves the selection to a shared library / dated / timestamped folder.

Would it be better to specify a bitrate instead of using CBR?

mp4_gui.py (50.5 KB)

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For those of you in the “change the extension” camp, this might help:
rename_mov_to_mp4.py (3.0 KB)

In the MediaHub, you can right click a selection of .mov’s or a directory and this script will change all of the extensions for you. Either one can be found under “Renamers.”

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I just voted this feature request up. Thanks for providing the link!

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i just upvoted! do it to it people!

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Voted

Hi John,

Just curious if mp4_gui.py is compatible with the latest python?

Thanks!

If it’s not, converting Python 2 to Python 3 is super easy. You could definitely do it yourself.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/2to3.html

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Hey @Josh_Laurence!

I haven’t messed with this script in a while, but it should work with Python 3. I bailed on it a while ago because I could never get the colors right in the ffmpeg settings and because I couldn’t get it to work with the In and Out points.