Converting to something a Mac can play

[frisket]

I have a number of family movies digitised by a local company, all of which play perfectly on my Linux systems, but none of them play at all on Macs ("The file is not compatible with QuickTime player"). This seems to be a very common problem.

The formats as delivered (or at least the filetypes) are .mpg (for conversion from video tape) and .mp4 (for conversions from cine)

I have been led to believe that AVI, MOV, and MP4 all work on Macs, but my attempts to convert using mencoder all fail with the same error message (above) when I copy the file to a Mac. The command I have ben using is the one quoted on all the web pages I have looked at:

mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc sourcefile.mpg -o targetfile.avi

Incidentally, no matter what output file type I use (.avi, .mov, .mp4), the output file size is identical. This makes me think that it is failing to perform the relevant reencoding because I have omitted some vital piece of information like the output file format — is just the output filetype sufficient or is there something missing. Clearly as it stands it is not doing what the command line implies. I don't care what type of file I have to convert to so long as it plays on an iMac or iPad.

[LigH.de]

To create a media file that works on a Mac, you need to select

• a video codec which is supported by QuickTime (with options set up in a range supported by QuickTime)
• an audio codec which is supported by QuickTime (with options set up in a range supported by QuickTime)
• a container format which is supported by QuickTime and able to combine video and audio stream

Means: Do some homework and learn what is possible and what is required. That will take some time but is absolutely necessary when you want it to work in a restricted system like QuickTime.

Or...

Use a player which has less restrictions and more features than QuickTime. Like the VLC player.

PS: A quite common combination is the MP4 container, containing a video stream in MPEG4 AVC (H.264) format in Main profile with a lower level and limited complexity (I hope you can find documentations about that, it is complicated) and MPEG audio (MP3 or LC-AAC). But mencoder is not really a state-of-the-art converter. Rather obsolete these days. Some more elaborate converters do exist which have presets to create clips with the required restrictions per specific playback device. I just have no clue which of them are available on a Mac. Maybe HandBrake.