I am unable to view movies transferred from the MAC to a thumb drive or a DVD on my Sony television. I suspect the problem is with the .mov extension. How can I change the .mov extension to .mpeg or .avi?
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
How can I change the .mov extension to .mpeg or .avi?
MOV is a file type extension—not a file compression format. You can manually change any file extension to anything you want at the file/Finder level. However, this does not change the file data actually contained in the file nor does it change the file container type. Therefore, assuming the MOV file does not already actually contain "muxed" MPEG-2 content, you would have to re-compress the file data using whatever converter you may have available. iDVD, Compressor, and Toast are common applications that can create "muxed" MPEG-2 content depending on the combination of MPEG-2 and AC3 or MPEG-2 and PCM content you are trying to create. Once you have transcoded the data you can then modify the audio stream to MPEG-2 layered audio and place the data in a file container (e.g., MPG, MPEG, TS, elementary M2V and AIFF streams, etc.) depending on your particular needs.
As to the use of AVI file containers, audio and video codec support will depend on which applications you intend to use and the codecs you wish to target. The easiest option here would likely be to simply use the free HandBrake application to convert your MOV file to an AVI file assuming the MOV file contains data compression formats supported by HandBrake. (E.g., Apple "Pro" editing video formats would not be supported by HandBrake.)
How can I change the .mov extension to .mpeg or .avi?
MOV is a file type extension—not a file compression format. You can manually change any file extension to anything you want at the file/Finder level. However, this does not change the file data actually contained in the file nor does it change the file container type. Therefore, assuming the MOV file does not already actually contain "muxed" MPEG-2 content, you would have to re-compress the file data using whatever converter you may have available. iDVD, Compressor, and Toast are common applications that can create "muxed" MPEG-2 content depending on the combination of MPEG-2 and AC3 or MPEG-2 and PCM content you are trying to create. Once you have transcoded the data you can then modify the audio stream to MPEG-2 layered audio and place the data in a file container (e.g., MPG, MPEG, TS, elementary M2V and AIFF streams, etc.) depending on your particular needs.
As to the use of AVI file containers, audio and video codec support will depend on which applications you intend to use and the codecs you wish to target. The easiest option here would likely be to simply use the free HandBrake application to convert your MOV file to an AVI file assuming the MOV file contains data compression formats supported by HandBrake. (E.g., Apple "Pro" editing video formats would not be supported by HandBrake.)
How to change MOV to MPEG?
