Alternative to MPEG Streamclip

[hwojtek]

I'd still love a great app for converting to different formats. Is that what Handbrake is good for?

With Handbrake you can convert virtually anything into mpeg2, mpeg4, h264 or h265. It's not designed to work in the other way (so no Apple Intermediate from your m4v's). For other uses I'd suggest something like https://www.movavi.com/videoconvertermac/

 

[kohlson]

I'd still love a great app for converting to different formats.

Licensing issues entangle many of the available solutions. WMV is a lead witness in this prosecution.

HB does, in addition to noted above, VP8/9, and other MKV formats. Look in the Preset tab.
Compressor does a good job of converting a wide range of formats into more commonly used ones.

If you're looking for a more comprehensive any-to-any, try something like Wondershare or Media Encoder, from Adobe.

But if you want something where cost=zero, that will limit your options.

 

[bergert]

Handbrake. While a brilliant utility, MPEG Streamclip is single-threaded and 32-bit.

With Streamclip I can select a portion of an MP4/M4V file and save it - on my MacPro (2014) with SSD this takes seconds for Full-HD. Handbrake, QuickTime and FCPx require re-encode: Streamclip saves a 2GB file in 10 seconds - HB takes 20 minutes at best (6/12-core MacPro).

Re-encoding is not just a waste of time but also a NO-GO because it always implies loss of quality.

 

[bergert]

I had a similar problem (cutting out advertising from satellite streams). Solution for Catalina: avidemux. UI and workflow can be compared to mpegstreamclip (set markers, cut passages, optionally save directly without conversion (mode: "copy") or encode in h264, h265 mkv etc.) http://avidemux.sourceforge.net

This is a very good solution:
- video: copy
- audio: copy
- muxer: mp4v2 muxer (unfortunately, this has to be selected at every launch, is not remembered)

 

[photodok]

Sorry, I thought it was a well known app. I'm just an amateur looking to define and snip sections of videos out and saving them to a file. Conversion to M4V would be nice. Thanks.

It is a well known app, someone piped in who didn't know the answer and would have been better to keep quiet so we don't have to read it. There are a lot of apps out there, however there is no real true replacement for it. Besides being free MPeg Streamclip was also capable of trimming, compressing, de-interlacing, stripping, joining, converting and many others. There is Movavi, Any Video Converter, Ensoft, Strata and more. Since I have Adobe's full package I have not bothered investigating to deep as Premiere is more of the go to with everything and the only thing I really need is a converter and I already have a paid version of Any Video Converter.

 

[Crowbot]

It is a well known app, someone piped in who didn't know the answer and would have been better to keep quiet so we don't have to read it. There are a lot of apps out there, however there is no real true replacement for it. Besides being free MPeg Streamclip was also capable of trimming, compressing, de-interlacing, stripping, joining, converting and many others. There is Movavi, Any Video Converter, Ensoft, Strata and more. Since I have Adobe's full package I have not bothered investigating to deep as Premiere is more of the go to with everything and the only thing I really need is a converter and I already have a paid version of Any Video Converter.

Well 1-Click is in the App Store now so I'm all set for what I want to do.