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I have a m4a audio file that I need to convert to a mov file. How can I do this?

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  • 1
    mov is a video format, what exactly do you want to convert here?
    – nohillside ♦
    Oct 31, 2013 at 5:43
  • Exactly what I said. I have a m4a file that I want to make into a video file. Is there a tool that makes this easy? I suppose the video portion would be just a black image, but if the tool allows me to select what image is displayed while the audio plays, that would be better.
    – ericg
    Oct 31, 2013 at 10:35
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    Just out of curiosity: Why would you want to do that?
    – nohillside ♦
    Oct 31, 2013 at 11:50
  • I'm doing it to upload my podcast audio file to YouTube to take advantage of auto-captioning for a deaf colleague who wants to subscribe.
    – neontapir
    Jan 30, 2015 at 17:56

5 Answers 5

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This creates an x264-encoded mov file with image.png as the background:

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i image.png -i audio.m4a -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -pix_fmt yuv420p -shortest output.mov

You can use mp4 or mkv as the container by just changing the name of the output file.

-c:a copy disables re-encoding the audio.

-loop 1 loops the image infinitely so that it is not shown for just one frame. It also makes the video stream infinitely long, so -shortest is needed to finish encoding after the audio stream finishes. -shortest has to be after the input files in new versions of ffmpeg.

-crf (constant rate factor) can be from 0 (lossless) to 51 (lowest quality). If you remove -pix_fmt yuv420p, ffmpeg uses yuv444p, which is not supported by many video players.

You can use a black background by replacing -loop 1 -i image.png with -f lavfi -i color=c=black:s=1280x720. You can resize an image by adding an option like -filter:v '[in] scale=-1:720, pad=1280:720:640-iw/2 [out]'.

More information:

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Open the .m4a in QuickTime and export it as a .mov file.

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  • Doesn't work. The Format menu only provides the option "Audio Only". I want an actual movie...I suppose the video portion would be just a black image.
    – ericg
    Oct 31, 2013 at 10:34
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You could use iMovie to create a movie just showing a black screen and using the audio file as the audio track.

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  • Good idea. Any good set of instructions for how to do that?
    – ericg
    Oct 31, 2013 at 12:49
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This can be accomplished with VLC.

Please refer to the following transcoding instructions.

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Flip for Mac easily opened, converted and saved the file to .MOV

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