Bulk convert .mov to .mp4 with ffmpeg 🎥

FFmpeg

FFmpeg is a collection of libraries and tools to process multimedia content such as audio, video, subtitles and related metadata.

It is a cross platform tool that we will use to make the conversion.

To do it on windows easily, here are the small steps you need to follow:

Download a ffmpeg windows build from ffmpeg.com.
Unzip it and place it in Program Files for example.
Add the ffmpeg to your PATH environment variable with the cmd.exe tool (windows CLI).
```
setx /M PATH "D:\Program Files\ffmpeg\bin;%PATH%"
```
Check that it is now working (you might need to source the env variables or re open cmd.exe)
```
ffmpeg -version
```
Go to the directory with all the .mov files using the CD command, use DIR to display what’s in the directory.
- You can find the path to your folder in the explorer (click on the top bar).
- If the folder is situated in another disk like D, type D: to switch to it then use the CD command.

Run this loop command to convert all the .mov files from that directory to .mp4 using ffmpeg.

FOR /r %i IN (*.MOV) DO ffmpeg -i "%i" -vcodec h264 -acodec mp2 "%~ni.mp4"

That’s it you’re done. Now you should have in that folder all of your files .mov and the .mp4 with the same name.

If you have music you want to convert from one format to another (.ogg or else). You could do the same step, and just change the ffmpeg command with:

ffmpeg -i music.ogg music.mp3

The -i is the input music.ogg, the output name will be music.mp3.