mov2mp4

A command-line tool to convert .mov files to lightweight .mp4 files using H.264/AAC encoding.

Why?

macOS Screen Recording creates .mov files that are often very large. A 5-minute screen recording can easily be 500MB+. This tool compresses them to a fraction of the size while maintaining good quality, making them easier to share via email, Slack, or upload to the web.

Requirements

• Node.js 20.0.0 or higher
• FFmpeg must be installed on your system

Installing FFmpeg

Homebrew:

brew install ffmpeg

MacPorts:

sudo port install ffmpeg

Installation

Homebrew (recommended for macOS)

brew install pleymor/mov2mp4/mov2mp4

This automatically installs ffmpeg as a dependency.

npm

npm install -g mov2mp4

Or run directly with npx:

npx mov2mp4 input.mov

Usage

Basic conversion

Convert a .mov file to .mp4 with default settings (medium quality):

mov2mp4 recording.mov

This creates recording.mp4 in the same directory.

Custom output path

Specify where to save the output file:

mov2mp4 recording.mov -o ~/Desktop/compressed.mp4

Quality presets

Choose between three quality levels:

# Low quality (smallest file, CRF 28)
mov2mp4 recording.mov -q low

# Medium quality (default, CRF 23)
mov2mp4 recording.mov -q medium

# High quality (largest file, CRF 18)
mov2mp4 recording.mov -q high

Help

mov2mp4 --help

Example

$ mov2mp4 screen-recording.mov -q low

Converting: screen-recording.mov
Progress: 100%

Conversion complete!
  Output: screen-recording.mp4
  Original size: 523.4 MB
  New size: 42.1 MB
  Compression: 92% reduction

License

MIT