MOV format, how to play and convert MOV files on Mac

  1. What are MOV files?
  2. How to play MOV files on Mac?
  3. How to convert MOV to MP4, AVI, MOV, etc. on Mac?
  4. Convert DVD and videos such as WMV, AVI, to MOV on Mac?

Part 1, What are MOV files?

The .MOV file format is a MPEG 4 video format first released in 1998 and is used in Apple's Quicktime program, which is a media player similar to Windows Media Player. Like WMV (Windows Media Video) the .MOV format is only connected with Quicktime.

The MOV file extension normally represents a QuickTime multimedia file. QuickTime is a movie/video/multimedia format developed by Apple and is often used in websites, mostly for streaming audio or video.

The QuickTime (.MOV ) file format functions as a multimedia container file that contains one or more tracks, each of which stores a particular type of data: audio, video, effects, or text (e.g. for subtitles). Each track either contains a digitally-encoded media stream (using a specific codec) or a data reference to the media stream located in another file. Tracks are maintained in a hierarchal data structure consisting of objects called atoms. An atom can be a parent to other atoms or it can contain media or edit data, but it cannot do both.

Part 2, How to play .MOV files on Mac and Windows?

It is easy to play MOV videos. You can use VLC player from Video Lan and QuickTime Player which allows Mac and Windows users to view QuickTime multimedia either inside or outside of their web browser.

Part 3, How to convert MOV files to MOV, MPEG, MP4 on Mac?

If you want to convert MOV to AVI, MP4, FLV, etc. on Mac, you need MOV Video Converter for Mac to help you.

1 Install and Run MOV Video Converter for Mac

You can download it for free:

To install it, simply mount the .dmg archive by double-clicking it, and drag the application to your applications folder (or wherever you want it ).

2Load Videos to the program

Drag & drop the DVD disc image DVD discor video file(s) to the grey area. Or go to “File” menu, chose “Load DVD” or “Add Video/Audio files” and navigate to the files you want to add.

Load DVD

3Convert MOV to MP4, FLV, AVI, etc. on Mac OS X

After you added MOV files, you can select an output format(MP4, MOV, FLV, AVI, etc.) for each video file and specify a directory on your computer to save the output files.

Convert MOV to MP4, MOV, FLV, AVI, etc. on Mac OS X

You can also extract audio from MOV to MP3 on Mac with this MOV Converter for Mac.

You can know more here: How to edit, crop, trim video files and capture pictures on Mac OS X?

Note: you can also use this MOV Video Converter to convert all videos such as MP4, VOB, AVI, WMV, M2TS/MTS to MOV on Mac.