iMovie 10 mp4 export won't play in QuickTime

Hi, Betht.friends,

Alternative #1: In the share dialogue box, under Quality, try selecting Best (pro res). That will give you a movie with a .mov extension. It will take longer to share out, and the file size will be considerably larger, but quality should be better. See if Quicktime will play that.

Alternative #2: Use the free downloads Streamclip or Handbrake to convert your video to Mpeg-4/AAC with H.264 codec.

Alternative #3: Download current version of Quicktime. Keep your old one as well.

Hope this helps.

-- Rich

Hi,

My first post in this thread outlines the approach that I recommend. You also can use the free download, Handbrake, to make the conversion.

However, when I share from iMovie to file, and get an Mp4 movie, it plays fine in Quicktime. Have you tried to open yours in Quicktime? I am using version 10.4.

Yes. I have an .mp4 movie. Now what software app do I use (besides imovie) to open it, since quicktime doesn't work for this anymore? #confused. Thank you.

Every article I've read suggests Share>Export to Quicktime to convert an iMovie project to mp4.....I'm using the current version of QuickTime (10.1.2) and Sierra OS. I don't have "export" to Quicktime anywhere. The version of Quicktime I am using has Share as a drop down from File. Share includes the following options: theater, email, iTunes, Youtube, Facebook, Vimeo, image, and file. Quicktime is simply not there! Please help!

As you have found, the current version of iMovie does not have a share to Quicktime option. The articles you have read deal with older versions. Instead, share to your desktop as a file, using the high quality setting, and you will get an Mp4 movie.

So I want to "share" the imovie to myself. In days past, I would share as "file" and simply save it to the desktop. Then when I opened it, it would automatically open with quicktime player. Now it's saying that it can't open it. I am hopelessly confused and want a simple answer how to fix this. please help. thank you in advance.

Yes. After several attempts, it finally did using "best" share method, which made it .mov. The problem I think is the file size. The movie I'm "sharing" is an hour long, so perhaps I've been trying to open it with quicktime before it had completed the export(?). I'd rather just share with .mp4 though, as I think the file size is a bit smaller.

I'm not sure how to do the Handbrake method, specifically, how to convert it (and into what?).

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

To use Handbrake, first download it from the internet. Then open the app. In the Handbrake menu, go to File>Open Source. A screen will pop up where you can navigate to where your movie is located (eg. desktop). Select your movie that you want to convert. In the Handbrake selection screen, select to encode to Mp4 with H.264. Go to the Handbrake menu and select File>Start Encoding. In a couple of minutes your movie will be re-encoded into Mp4. See if the re-encoded movie will play in Quicktime. What you would be doing is simply re-encoding an Mp4 back into an Mp4. For some reason that sometimes helps. It may not here. Just have to wait and see. Might be easier if you just put a small portion of your movie into a new original project and work with that, so you are not dealing with a 1 hour movie while you are experimenting.

Even without re-encoding, however, Quicktime normally does the conversion for you. Is that not happening with you?