How to use the MP4 to MOV converter
- Drop in the MP4 clips from a phone, camera, drone or screen recorder.
- Leave Resolution on Keep original for a lossless rewrap.
- Convert to MOV and download each clip or a ZIP of all of them.
A rewrap, not a re-encode
The compressed video and audio packets are carried over byte for byte, so the frames you get in the MOV are exactly the frames in the MP4. That is also why a long clip finishes in roughly the time it takes your browser to read it.
An MP4 whose sound is in a format QuickTime does not expect in a MOV, such as Opus, gets only that audio track converted to AAC. The picture is still copied.
When it stops being lossless
Picking a lower resolution under More settings means the picture has to be rebuilt, so the clip is re-encoded to H.264 at the new size. That takes longer and the frames are no longer identical.
The container change also does not turn H.264 into an editing codec such as ProRes. If scrubbing through long H.264 footage is sluggish in your editor, that is a codec question this page does not change.
Folders of clips
A whole card dump can go in at once. Each MOV lands within a few kilobytes of its MP4, since only the wrapper differs, and the ZIP button collects the lot for importing.
Rotation and timing details are kept, so clips shot upright on a phone still open upright in QuickTime and iMovie.
Questions
Is the MOV lower quality than the MP4?
No. With the streams copied, nothing about the picture or sound changes.
Do I need this for iMovie?
Often not: most Apple apps open MP4 directly. Convert when a particular tool or workflow insists on .mov.
Can I convert several clips at once?
Yes. Queue as many MP4s as you like; each becomes its own MOV with the same base name.