MOV to MP4
Put a QuickTime recording into an MP4, without uploading it.
A small task starts here.
Drop your video here, paste it, or choose from your device.
Up to 100 MB · MP4, M4V, or MOV · Processed locallyResult
Choose a video and the result appears here automatically.
MOV to MP4, without the extra steps.
MOV and MP4 are the same container with different rules about what may go inside, so most QuickTime files can become an MP4 without the picture being touched at all. Your browser reads the tracks, copies the encoded frames into a new file, and tells you which codec came out — and if that codec is one older players refuse, it can re-encode to H.264 instead.
How to use this tool
- 1Choose a MOV, MP4, or M4V file.
- 2Copy the video track, or re-encode it to H.264.
- 3Download the MP4.
When MOV to MP4 is the right tool
- A form or a submission portal accepts .mp4 and rejects the .MOV your iPhone just gave you, and renaming the file does not fix it.
- A QuickTime screen recording has to go into a slide deck, a course platform, or an editor that only lists MP4 in its import dialog.
- An HEVC recording opens fine on a Mac and shows a black rectangle on the Windows machine it was sent to.
- A video is going to a client and the file has to be something they can double-click, without either of you uploading a 90 MB recording to a converter site.
- You want to know what is actually inside a .MOV before you send it — which codec, whether it has sound, and whether that sound will survive.
- A camera wrote a .MOV with a timecode track and uncompressed audio, and the result has to be an ordinary file.
Most of this is not a conversion at all
QuickTime and MP4 are the same box structure with different guest lists. A .MOV from a phone or a screen recorder almost always holds H.264 or HEVC video and AAC audio — all of which an MP4 is allowed to carry — so the encoded frames are copied into a newly written file and nothing is decoded, re-compressed, or resized. That takes a moment rather than minutes, the picture is bit-for-bit what you started with, and the page says so rather than implying a conversion happened.
An MP4 is not automatically a playable file
The most common disappointment here is a repackaged recording that still will not open. An MP4 holding HEVC is a completely valid MP4, and plenty of older players, editors, and upload forms refuse it anyway — which is usually the real reason somebody went looking for a converter. So the codec inside is named on screen before you download, and re-encoding the picture to H.264 is offered as a separate, deliberate step, because it costs a generation of quality and real minutes.
What a MOV can hold that an MP4 cannot
ProRes, QuickTime Animation, Motion JPEG, and uncompressed PCM audio are all legal in a .MOV and none of them are legal in an MP4. A player handed one inside an MP4 does not shrug and carry on; it fails, usually without explaining. So each track is checked against what MP4 allows, the format is named in plain language rather than as four characters, and a picture that cannot be copied is re-encoded while sound that cannot be copied is left out — and said out loud, never silently.
Portrait recordings stay portrait
A phone films vertically by recording landscape pixels and writing a quarter turn into the track, and a converter that writes a fresh file while forgetting that note hands back a video lying on its side. The display matrix, the track's display size, and the original frame timing are carried straight across from the source, so a clip converted here comes out oriented the way the one you dropped in was. The same is true of the movie's own duration, which is taken from the frames rather than from a header that recorders often leave as a placeholder.
A few quick answers.
Choose a MOV, MP4, or M4V file. Copy the video track, or re-encode it to H.264. Download the MP4.
Tool inputs are processed in your browser. Crate has no upload endpoint and no accounts. Downloaded site assets and a cookie-free page-view count still require a connection; your files and text are not included in those requests.
Copying is lossless and instant but keeps the codec that was inside, so an MP4 made from an HEVC recording is still HEVC. Formats an MP4 cannot carry — ProRes, Animation, Motion JPEG — must be re-encoded, which needs a browser with an H.264 encoder and is capped at 9,000 frames a run; no browser decodes ProRes, so those files are refused by name. Audio is copied when the format is MP4-legal and left out with a warning when it is not, such as uncompressed PCM. WebM and Matroska are not read. Up to 100 MB.
Not when the track is copied, which is the default and what happens to almost every file: the encoded frames are moved into the new container byte for byte, so the picture is identical and the file size barely changes. Only the H.264 re-encode costs quality, and it is never chosen for you — it is a separate option, and the page says which of the two produced your download.
An MP4 cannot legally carry ProRes, so copying it is not a slow option but an impossible one, and no browser ships a ProRes decoder either — so the frames cannot be re-encoded here. The page names the exact variant it found, such as Apple ProRes 422 HQ, so you know what to change. Exporting H.264 from the app that made it, or converting it with QuickTime Player or ffmpeg, is the way through.
Sometimes. The page reads what the file says it is rather than what it is called, and tells you when the two agree. Rewriting it still does one real thing: the movie header is written ahead of the media, which is what lets a player start before the whole file has arrived. It is not a conversion of the picture, and the page will not pretend it was.
AAC, Dolby Digital, Apple Lossless, FLAC, and Opus are all copied across untouched — no re-encoding, so the sound you download is the sound you had. Uncompressed PCM, IMA ADPCM, and the other QuickTime-only formats cannot go into an MP4 and are left out, which is announced before you run it and again in the result. A file with no audio track at all is reported as exactly that rather than as audio removed.