Convert img to mp4

[ranchhand]

I have a lot of family img files (not DVD disks) that I would like to convert to mp4. I would appreciate any suggestions on software that would do that with no quality loss. Free if possible.
I have tried searching the website, but couldn't find any posts that were current.
I have used Format Factory for other things in the past, but lately I have seen some accusations of PUPs being loaded on installation, so am a bit leery. Don't know for sure if FF will even do it.
Thanks...

[moon_light]

Try Leawo Prof.Media

[ranchhand]

Thanks, but a couple of hundred bucks for a one-shot project isn't worth it.
Appreciate the response.

[davexnet]

Isn't an IMG file some kind of disk image? What files are inside it?
Can it be mounted in Windows or opened with Winzip or 7zip?

[Alwyn]

In Win 10/11, try right-clicking and choose "Extract All..." and see what happens.

[moon_light]

There is a free curve method, first use free DVDStyler to create pictures into DVD, and then extract the VOB video in the VIDEO_TS directory of the DVD disc.

[noemi7]

Strange recommendations You can do it in i.e. DaVinci Resolve https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHj6Ed6fk7s and from a command line using ffmpeg, examples.

[Alwyn]

@ranchhand, could you clarify IMG. Do you have images eg JPGs that you want to make into a video slideshow, or do you have a IMG on a disk and you want to convert it into a video file?

[ranchhand]

@Alwyn & daveexnet and others....
I have home movies that I made through the years and each one is burned to a DVD disk. An .img (image) file is one of those movies that was compressed for digital storage as .img.
I created .img copies because DVD is disappearing, so I needed something current to replace physical disks.
An image can also store data; my home computer backup system (Macrium Reflect) creates backup images of my entire OS, including all installed programs and data and I store it on an external SSD drive then disconnect it from the main system. In the event of a catastrophe or major virus infection (including ransomware) all I do is plug in the external drive, boot the computer from a bootable USB thumbdrive that has a bootable Macrium Reflect copy, and restore that image back onto my main SSD computer drive and I am back up and running in minutes like nothing ever happened.
Images themselves can be mounted in Windows 7-11 with no problems, just 2/click on the image file, it mounts virtual, and you can run the movie or view the pictures easily. In the case of backups, I can also pull any data off the virtual mount and drop it on my desktop screen. VERY nice feature.
I want to convert the movies to mp4 since that is the latest and greatest now. I see that .img is slowly going out of popularity.
@noemi...thanks for the link, I am going to try it soon as I get a minute. Will post back with results....
Thanks to everyone for responding!

[noemi7]

@ranchhand I got confused. So you have compressed movies to img storage format, not images (pictures). There are plenty of freeware programs like HandBrake, Shutter Encoder, clever FFmpeg-GUI which can convert DVD (VOB), and mpg to mp4 (h264). However, if your movies have extension mov then they are already in MPEG-4 format - then you don't need to convert them but remux to mp4.

[Alwyn]

I'm not familiar with Macrium, but I use Acronis, which, by the sound of it, uses a similar "backup" system, where you can "open" a backup image for inspection or extraction of particular files. You say you can mount the IMG images; do that. If it's a backup of a DVD, you should be able to find the VIDEO_TS folder. Copy that entire folder onto your PC somewhere.

From there, it is simply a matter of converting the video to MP4 using something like AVIDemux; I have written a guide for doing that here (the VOB conversion bit is at the bottom). However, I would consider leaving them in MPG format (the base codec for the VOBs on the DVD). That way, you won't have a conversion quality loss. MPEGs are generally larger than MP4s but if you are not disk-space challenged, I'd leave them as MPEGs.

[ranchhand]

Thanks all....I cruised the internet and found a lot of software claiming to convert, but finally ended up with good old Handbrake which does the job (as naoemi said above #10). Should have stuck with it from the start. So Handbrake will work fine converting .img to .mp4 and *hopefully* I won't have to do this again for several years. I read in one webpage that Handbrake causes loss of quality in the conversion, but I don't see any, so I'm happy.
Thanks to all for input and help!

[Santiago]

HandBrake can convert the IMG files to MP4. HandBrake is free.