Importing MOV files into Mac Photos

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Level 1

7 points

Importing MOV files into Mac Photos

I've got a ton of home movies of my kids that predate the modern version of the iOS photos app for Mac. At the time, I actually used iMovie for my archiving, even for clips that I wasn't intending to make an actual project out of. Now that doesn't seem like a good strategy, so my goal is to get the old stuff that's sitting inside my iMovie library moved into Photos. I'm up to late 2013 currently. I have mp4 files that were shot on a handheld that drag right in and it's great. Those go very quickly.

However, the MOV files that were shot on our iPhones at the time apparently cannot be imported in their native format, which is a bit ironic. At the moment, I'm using a piece of software called VLC to convert them into mp4 files that can be drug into the library. It works, but it's a multi step process and it's got to be done individually on each file. And once inside Photos, I have to manually adjust the date and time from the current date back to the original date, as well as usually rotate and flip the video. This is very tedious.

I have two questions:

A. Is there a better software solution to be able to do this a group at a time and not require manual editing? Free is better, but if a few bucks will save me hours of work, money talks.

B. At what point on the historic calendar will I reach a point where videos recorded on an iPhone will be able to be drug into the Photos app? As an aside, I'd be curious to hear why my videos from back then on my expensive Apple device do not play nicely with my current expensive Apple device.

Thank you for your help!

MacBook Pro (2021)

Posted on Nov 12, 2023 11:42 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,255 points

Nov 13, 2023 1:37 AM in response to fatnecks

You wrote " I'm up to late 2013 currently."

Which system version is installed on your Mac?

The upgrade to macOS 10.15 Catalina deprecated many video and image codecs. When Apple switched to 64bit only system code, some of the old iLife system frameworks have been removed from the system. You may want to have a look at this list for iMovie, which codecs are now no longer supported: About legacy media in iMovie for macOS - Apple Support

Files with the extension ".MOV" are QuickTime files, a container format, and inside this container may be various codecs. The MOV extension does not tell us anything about the actual resources inside this container.

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Answer 2

fatnecks Author

Level 1

7 points

Nov 21, 2023 8:11 AM in response to fatnecks

Your message does bring up an interesting question, though. By converting and moving this stuff into the Photos app, am I protected from future file format obsolescence? As in, if there’s another update in a year or two to either iOS or MacOS, what happens to the contents of my library?

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Answer 3

Nov 13, 2023 12:51 AM in response to fatnecks

Handbrake (or ffmpeg via the Terminal) can convert in batches.

I use exiftool to copy any important metadata (date, location, camera, lens, description, keywords, etc) from the original movie to the converted re-encoded movie where that info is usually lost or is in a format that Photos does not read (ffmpeg has some options to preserve metadata but at the moment they don't really work).

For example, this command copies all metadata from the original to the re-encoded movie. There might be lots of unimportant metadata in the original so I usually check what info is important and use a command that copies only it. It is possible to modify this to a batch or a adjust it if the source and target have same name but different suffixes, or if they are in different folders etc:

exiftool -m -overwrite_original -api QuickTimeUTC=1 -api LargeFileSupport=1 -TagsFromFile source.mp4 -All:All '-FileCreateDate<QuickTime:CreateDate' '-FileModifyDate<QuickTime:CreateDate' destination.mp4

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Answer 4

fatnecks Author

Level 1

7 points

Nov 13, 2023 2:37 PM in response to léonie

I'm running Sonoma 14.0 on my Mac at the moment. After I made this post, I stumbled upon Handbrake and have been using it some. It's definitely more "batchy" than VLC but I still have to edit the metadata once inside Photos.

When I right click on the MOV files, the codecs listed for my late 2013 files are:

Timecode, Linear PCM, Apple Intermediate Codec

The encoding software says version 7.0.4

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Answer 5

bryoga

Level 1

8 points

Dec 23, 2023 3:29 PM in response to fatnecks

fatnecks,

i have this same issue and it's so frustrating. I have an iMac that is running on Catalina but i haven't used it in years because it's so slow and if I have imovie and photos open at the same time, it spins and then freezes. All my little movie clips from iMovie are .mov format and current QuickTime player can't play them. I'm currently trying to figure out how to use my external drive backup to bring these movies into my current laptop (macbook pro running on monterey) but I'm getting the unsupported error. I used Apple because everyone said it was great for photos and videos and now I'm stuck with unsupported files that is so tedious that I'll never get through the thousands of videos I have of my babies. I was on a call with apple support last week and i can't believe there's nothing they have that can help with this.

Please let me know if you figured anything else out.

I have the same codecs as you.

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Answer 6

Dec 24, 2023 2:07 AM in response to Matti Haveri

OK, I created Apple Intermediate Codec .mov by exporting from QuickTime Player 7 Pro in El Capitan.

Sonoma QuickTime Player.app could play it OK (I guess FCP has installed Pro Video Formats 2.3 for me) but Photos.app silently failed to import that.

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Answer 7

Dec 25, 2023 3:04 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Yes, installing Pro Video Formats 2.3 enables Sonoma QuickTime Player.app to play such Apple Intermediate Codec movies. But Photos.app can not import them anyway.

As a workaround re-encode them to H.264 or H.265 video and AAC audio with Handbrake. Or with ffmpeg with something like:

ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx265 -crf 28 -preset medium -timecode 00:00:00:00 -tag:v hvc1 -c:a aac -b:a 128k output.mp4

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Answer 8

fatnecks Author

Level 1

7 points

Dec 26, 2023 10:03 AM in response to bryoga

I just downloaded Handbrake and got to know how to do the batch conversions. Since I was coming out of iMovie, I just went to the folders that were organized by date and I'd do a month at a time and keep track of where I was on the timeline with an Apple note.

If I had one wish about the process, it would be to retain the original time stamp thru the conversion process. There's a checkbox that says something about retaining metadata, but the converted videos always came through with a current stamp, so I'd have to drag them into Photos and then alter the stamp.

This process worked OK. It just took time. Good luck!

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Answer 9

Jul 5, 2024 2:04 AM in response to fatnecks

Yeah I was having the same problem - unable to drag the mov files straight to photos. I'm not 100% sure this actually works but I "selected" the files instead, right-clicked then "open with.. photos". It opened in the app and at the upper right "import to photos" button was available, clicked it then everything was imported.

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Answer 10

Dec 23, 2023 11:57 PM in response to fatnecks

> Apple Intermediate Codec

I don't have such test clips but does this help:

Pro Video Formats 2.3 (Apple Intermediate Codec etc):

Pro Video Formats 2.3

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Importing MOV files into Mac Photos

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