Can't play mp4 movies

[jpohio]

I had some old movies converted to CD a few years ago and recently had those CD videos converted to digital files, specifically MP4. They play fine on my Windows 10 system, I think using Windows media player, but not 100% sure. I cannot get them to play on my new iMac 24. I tried Quick Time, VLT and IINA. None worked, each of them open, but the playback screen is black. After a bit of research it seems Macs do better with MOV format, but I confess I have not dug very deep.

I can go back to the guy that converted the files from CD and get him to convert to MOV format, but before I do that I want to confirm whether I am doing something wrong on the Mac, whether there might be another alternative, and confirm that MOV files will play ok on the Mac. I have three movies, each is about 3GB in size and 2 hours in length.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Slartibart]

Did you try VLC to play them? What version of MacOS on what Mac are you running? .MOV is just a container and not a video compression format - you can try to use handbrake and convert one of your videos using e.g. one of the “fast” presets.

 

[jpohio]

I did try VLC, same result. Running MacOS 11.6. I will try handbrake, thank you for responding