MOV to WebM
A phone recording, small enough to put on a page
What the conversion sites charge
| Convertio | upload the whole file, with a daily cap | |
| Zamzar | upload the whole file, with a size cap | |
| CloudConvert | upload the whole file, priced per minute | |
| PixPunk | Free | no upload, no account, no daily cap |
A MOV out of a phone or a screen recorder is built for quality on the device that made it, not for weight on a connection somewhere else. WebM is the version you put on a page.
- 1
Where your MOV came from
An iPhone, a Mac screen recording, or Final Cut. All three write MOV by default, and all three write files sized for the machine that made them rather than for a page.
- 2
Why WebM
Weight. VP9 in a WebM is meaningfully smaller than the same picture as H.264, and every current browser plays it, which is exactly the situation a page you control is in.
- 3
What it costs you
Real time. The picture inside a MOV cannot go into a WebM as it is, so every frame is decoded and encoded again, which takes roughly as long as the video runs. This is the slow direction and the page says so before you start.
FAQ
- How do I convert MOV to WebM?
- Drop the file on this page and press the button. It runs in your browser, so there is no upload, no account and no daily limit.
- Why is my MOV so large?
- Because the device that wrote it was optimising for its own screen, not your bandwidth. A screen recording in particular is often several times the size of the same footage prepared for a page.
- Why is this slower than other conversions here?
- Because nothing can be copied. Some conversions just change the box around the picture; this one has to decode and re-encode every frame, and that takes about as long as the video is.
- Should I use WebM or MP4?
- WebM if you control the page it plays on and want the smaller file. MP4 if the file is going to a person rather than a page, because that is the one that opens everywhere.
- Is there a size limit?
- 500 MB, which is a limit of doing this in a tab rather than a policy. Nothing is uploaded, so there is no daily cap and no account behind it.
- Is the file uploaded?
- No. The video is opened and written back out in the page. No request carries it anywhere, which the network panel will show you while it runs.