Converting .mov to .mp4 Guide

For the past few months, Alex had been providing us with 1080p MP4 HD trailers which you can use to play on your PS3 (PlayStation 3). I thought it’d be neat and in the spirit of this site to provide a guide/tutorial on how he accomplishes the conversion.

Alex has kindly written up a tutorial on how he converts the .mov HD trailers to .mp4 files: Convert .mov to .mp4

He usually uses Quicktime Pro to do the conversion, but since Quicktime Pro isn’t free, he went and searched for a free alternative:

So after a small research, I came across a program called Yamb. Produces the same results as QuickTime Pro… for free!

Alex is also intending to do another tutorial for converting using Quicktime Pro and you can expect that shortly.

We hope you’ll find it useful.

Update:

As a continuation from yesterday’s posted guide, Alex has provided an update on how to use QuickTime Pro for the conversion. The guide is still located at:

Convert .mov to .mp4

Any comments and feedback are welcomed.

21 thoughts on “Converting .mov to .mp4 Guide

  1. Hello,

    Thanks for the tutorial on converting these HD trailers into other formats. I was looking into it for the PS3 and was happy to find what you posted. I tried using Yamb but for some reason it would not work for me after several attemps at saving the file. Not sure what was wrong there. So I finally shelled out the $29 for Quick Time Pro and that works like a charm. Thanks for all the info you provided for these conversions… and for all these great HD Trailers!

    Chris

  2. Alex,

    I downloaded that latest version of Yamb which was 2.1 and I tried numerous HD Trailers and they all came up the same error when I hit the save button. I already deleted Yamb off my pc so I can’t try it again to give you the exact error message. It was something like “the file doesn’t exist” after showing the folders I was trying to save it in.

    Chris

  3. Chris,

    Did the error you got say something like this “The path of MP4Box is missing… Yamb cannot find MP4Box. Please, provide a correct path in the Settings?”

    – Alex

  4. Alex,

    No that was not the error message I remember. I’m not a big computer whiz here but I followed the tutorial you have here and it did not work for me for some reason. I couldn’t see anything that I might have been doing wrong. I just gave up on it and payed for QuickTime Pro and that is working fine for the conversions. Wish I could give you a more entailed description of the error message! It is probably just my pc………….

    Thanks for all the trailers 🙂 and all the work you do to provide us with them.

    Chris

  5. I’ve been using Yamb on my home and work PCs after a recommendation on an AV site; it works a treat. I wish all convertors were as quick and effective! And it’s FREEEEE!!!!
    The PS3 plays them fine with no lip sync issues. The resulting MP4s aren’t recognised by iTunes/ipod touch for some reason.

  6. If you have QuickTime Pro, you can go to File > Export. Under the Export drop-down menu, select Movie to iPhone.

    I tested it with the Ice Age 3 480p trailer and it worked fine on my iPhone. I don’t have an iPod touch to test it on, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.

    Also, it doesn’t matter if you use the 480p, 720p, or 1080p versions of a trailer… the result will be the same (size, bitrate, resolution, etc…)

    It seems it’s not possible to do it through Yamb. :/ Haven’t been able to find a freeware to do this… but I’m sure I will eventually.

  7. I’ve updated the QuickTime Pro section of the guide with a way to convert to an iPhone/iPod touch compatible format. I’ll add a way on how to do it using a freeware sometime next week.

  8. i was wondering if you would know the proper way (program) i could use to convert a MKV file to a ps3 video?
    (the file in question is just an HD music video)

  9. Are there softwares available which we can use to vary attributes of the resultant .mp4 file (like bit-rate) so as to reduce the file size and create our own custom .mp4 encodes.

  10. @Krunk: Thank You so much. I got the “Super” software and manage to encode some mp4 videos. The result was a size almost 1/4th of the mov file (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, downloaded from this blog) with no noticeable loss in quality..Great !!!

    To sum up, Thank’s a ton !!!

  11. I purchased QTPro last night. I exported a MOV file to MP4 using pass thru video and audio and I can’t get it to stream. What media server are you using? I also tried copying the file to the hard drive, using Tversity and PS3Server, and it wouldn’t play. Any thoughts?

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