@Peyton-Todd “suggested a .BAT file using FFmpeg, which I found hard to implement”

In my profile theres a link to my util VFR2CFR, it may or may not be what you previously came across. It’s purpose is to convert variable frame rate to constant frame rate, but it also includes an option to give the output files an mp4 extension where the input could be mov. Its very easy to use, just drag and drop one or more files onto the util, select P to start processing. Requires ffmpeg installed and added to the windows PATH.

Maybe select one of your files that comes out with the white frame and see if it helps. Ideally make one of the problem files available as a download for users to check out.

Note that this util does transcode the video, so use a quality setting of say 18 or less to avoid unnecessary quality loss. I'm curious if in transcoding the issue is resolved, otherwise there is no need to transcode, so if it fixes while transcoding, only use on files that have the issue.

You have probably already used something like this, no transcoding, simply a copy. Requires the ffmpeg utils also.

Copy the following 4 lines into say MOV2MP4.bat file ...

@echo off
cls
REM Just drop all .mov video clips with this batch file into the same folder and run the batch file.
for %%a in ("*.mov") do ffmpeg -i "%%a" -vcodec copy -acodec copy "%%~na.mp4"

Thanks, Musicvid, I'll try just changing the file extension of the MOVs to MP4, although I vaguely remember that I tried that once in the past, and while it seemed to work in some circumstances, Adobe was not happy with it when I tried to embed it into a PDF. On the other hand, I've currently switched from embedding to linking...

1. JN, How do I get access to your VFR2CFR?

2. I never downloaded ffmpeg, not only because the instructions seemed complicated but mainly because I've been burned before when downloading something that claimed to be free and turned out to contain malware instead. Do you know of a download site that you trust for downloading FFmpeg? One of the sites that I consulted for this claimed that the download from FFMPEG's own site doesn't work in Win 10.

3. It turned out that ffmpeg.exe does exist on my computer, inside the Program Files folder for QWinFF. However, when I tried to run MOV2MP4 BAT by double-clicking it from Windows folder containing some MOVs, nothing happened, so I suppose I must be inside a DOS window to do that. And I may have to do these conversions from a folder directly under the C:root since my MOVs are scattered all over the place inside a many-level folder tree with long names including internal spaces in them. So I decided to put some MOVs and MOV2MPC.BAT inside a folder directly under the C: root, and run MOV2MP4.BAT from there. It did run, but couldn't it find ffmpeg. So that tells me (as I later learned by re-reading your answer) that FFmpeg.exe must be in the Windows PATH.

4. However, if I have to do these conversions from a DOS folder directly under C: anyway, would it work just as well simply to place a copy of FFmpeg.exe in that folder? Or does it have to be pointed to from somewhere in the Registry?

5. Back to the question raised by Musicvid, I'm assuming your word 'transcoding' refers to actually changing the codec to be H264-compliant, right? That is what I believe I have been doing so far. Then while opening from the PDF what I suppose to be true MP4's, I tell my readers to make Quicktime the default for MP4's since that interface gives them frame-by-frame viewing and ends on the last real frame instead of a black screen like most other viewer apps, which is just as bad as ending on a white screen as Quicktime does with these defective conversions. So probably transcoding is exactly what I want. Anyway what I'm doing now seems to be working apart from the need to convert all the MOVs to MP4 without the white screen at the end.

Thanks for your continued help!

I would have attached some copies to my original post but saw no way to do that. Or is the chain link icon the symbol for that? No matter, I have put a couple of MOVs and the MP4s they converted to at the Dropbox link below:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fkk62blx11jc794/AADrOtFP1A9Oz6jKZGQEypsUa?dl=0

Back to the question raised by Musicvid, I'm assuming your word 'transcoding' refers to actually changing the codec to be H264-compliant, right? 

Peyton, you're missing the part that your .mov file is probably already h264, if it was acquired in the last five years.

That's why changing the container name to .mp4 should work.

Take one file, right-click, and Rename it to .mp4 Good luck.

One test is worth all the speculation. Either it will work, or it won't.

Also, JN, I notice that the line of code you recommended for the BAT file contains the word 'copy', If I do want to be sure the result is transcoded should I still use that line of code or something else?

Musicvid, Even though the two MOV files that I put in Dropbox have dates within the last 5 years, there are surely many among the hundreds and hundreds that I have that were prepared earlier, and it would be rather time-consuming to to check each one of them before the renaming process (about equal to just converting them one at a time via Vegas). Nonetheless, I just tried the test with one that was built in 2013, and just as I remembered, Adobe saw through the ruse when I tried to embed it, and told me I have to turn it into h264 first. Indeed, true to my earlier memory, that error message is what I always used to get when I tried to embed a MOV after renaming it to MP4. So then I tried linking to it instead, and Adobe did not complain and opened it just fine. It's suspicious of anything that you link to, but merely presents a warning message that can be turned off in Edit > Preferences > Security (Enhanced).

Oddly, though, if one inspects the 2013 MOV file via MediaInfo, it claims to be "MPEG4 (Quicktime)" - and this in a MOV file that was built back in back in 2013. This suggests that MOVs were already h264 as long ago as that. Except that this so-called MPEG4 must not have actually been h264 despite being called MPEG4 - assuming, that is, that MPEG4 is just a longer name for MP4.

I haven't yet tested with a MOV file that converts to an MP4 that ends with a white screen, but if that's merely a product of the conversion process, then it may not matter. I'll put that off till tomorrow, though, since it's too late now for me to think straight. It does suggest, however, that Vegas knows how to deal with MOVs that trigger this white screen by means of some process that FFmpeg knows not of.

Sure, some movs were h.264 before 2013- this is the standard for the Canon cameras that started the whole digital video with DSLRs trend (2008's 5dMKII and beyond).

Your original files are likely  MPEG4 part 12, while 'mp4' that you are converting to is  MPEG4 part 14. You can't change the suffix or rewrap if modern MP4 ( MPEG4 part 14) is required

. Except that this so-called MPEG4 must not have actually been h264 despite being called MPEG4 - assuming, that is, that MPEG4 is just a longer name for MP4.

 

Incorrect to my understanding. (But I'm always open to correction)

MPEG4 is a codec, AVC and H264 are ether variants or similar.

MP4 is a file type, a container. Usually the video codec contained within is MPEG4.

FWIW: I downloaded the first video in the drop box & couldn't play the original or the original with the extension changed to mp4.

My two go-to tools in a situation like this are Handbrake or FFMPEG.

Handbrake processed the video easily. FFMPEG gagged because the width of the original is 655 pixels. Handbrake automatically converted it to 654x480. To get FFMPEG to do so I had to add a scale filter.

Here's my FFMPEG input:
 

ffmpeg -i "D:\Video\Vegas forum video test\12-80_1105 (speech video) no, I(don't) want white, this.mov" -vcodec libx264 -vf scale=654:480  -movflags faststart "D:\Video\Vegas forum video test\12-80_1105 (speech video) no, I(don't) want white, this ffmpeg.mp4"

pause

IMHO: use Handbrake. You can queue up a full directory of input files and it'll just chug through them.

 

Ok Peyton, suit yourself. It wasn't a confrontation..........

@Peyton-Todd @3d87c4 Has identified the issue with the need to scale.

You can use the following mod to my original batch file which didn't work because of the odd frame size. My VFR2CFR didn't either, probably for the same reason, also it doesn't currently have a FPS setting as low as 15.

As before, copy the following 3 lines into say MOV2MP4.bat.

@echo off
cls
for %%a in ("*.mov") do ffmpeg -y -i "%%a" -vf scale=654:480 -movflags faststart -crf 15 -b:a 384k "%%~na.mp4"

Requires ffmpeg downloaded and installed on the Windows PATH.

Copy this batch file into the same folder where the .mov files are located, then double click the batch file to start processing and outputting the MOV files to .mp4. There is no need to create a DOS CMD window, though the batch file will run in one while processing, it then closes it and returns to Windows.
The video is transcoded and the audio output is 384kb to match the two source files you supplied.
The -CRF value gives an approximate video data rate and size close to the original 2 clips.

These are some basic instructions to download and install ffmpeg on the Windows PATH. It only has to be done once.

"Do you know of a download site that you trust for downloading FFmpeg?" No one is going to give you a cast iron guarantee that a particular download, or site, is safe, make your own decision about that.

    You need to download and install say a static version of ffmpeg and add it to the windows PATH.
    Example ... https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/

    Adding the ffmpeg "BIN" folder to the "PATH" ...

    Search for "env" in Windows "search" ...
    or Select "Settings" "System", then Search ...

    Select "Edit the System enviornment variables" ... Not "Edit enviornment variables for your account"
    With the "advanced" tab selected click the "Enviornment Variables button at the bottom right ...

If you google you will find more step by step instructions, its well worth the effort as you may have other needs in the future that requires ffmpeg installed.

If you go to your C drive and do a search for ffmpeg.exe you may well find multiple results, quite a lot of "Programs" actually rely on it, but they don't necessarily shout it from the roof tops.

"1. JN, How do I get access to your VFR2CFR?" As I already said in my previous post, the link is in my profile. Simply click the circular graphic with JN- in it, (sometimes Avatar).

You can also just click @JN-'s SIGNATURE to see the link.

@vkmast Thanks! I didn't even think, know of that, simpler to explain🤣.

Your files (.mov) have Sorenson 3 video codec and Qdesign 2 audio codec. In order to be in the .mp4 format, it will be necessary to convert, as the .mp4 container does not support these codecs natively.

The XMedia Recod Program worked well here. It does batch conversion easily.

You can download XMedia Recod from the link below. It is free.

https://www.xmedia-recode.de/download.php

It is also possible to batch convert in Vegas itself using specific scripts or using the Vegasaur or Happy Otter Scripts extensions, but these extensions are not free.

https://vegasaur.com/

https://tools4vegas.com/home/

First, it may be useful to identify myself and my project further. I was trained more as a linguist than a computer guy or video expert, so my knowledge of the video world is limited to what I was able to glean by dealing with the videos belonging to my project, which studies the development of a hearing child of deaf parents who knew only sign language until he first encountered English just before his third birthday. The videos I work with derive from the following three sources: 

(1) black-and-white reel-to-reel videos of the child when he was of preschool age, that were shot in the 1970's and have gone through numerous transformations since then. Most of them, I think, were originally 640x480. The weird 655 x 480 aspect ratio derives from one of them that I couldn't make work, and a video expert at Creative Cow suggested I use 655x480 for that particular video, and this seems to have remained as the default in Vegas for years. The sampling I have just done with Mediainfo suggests that most of them may be in that aspect ratio. The 15 fps, which also seems true of most of them,  is actually a surprise to me, and apparently stems from the choice of Sorenson (for unknown reasons) that also got replicated as a default. In my ignorance I kept these defaults for decades, knowing only that the results looked okay.

(2) color videos shot from 2002 to the present of the same child - now an adult - performing sign language translations of sentences he spoke as a child. These were shot with a Sony handheld camera in 720x480 at 29.97 fps. Again in my ignorance, I excerpted them to MOV files at 15 fps Sorenson. Based on the ones I've sampled so far, about half were written to MOV files at 655x480, and half to MOV at 640x480. For some reason, the former converted to MP4 at 654x480.

(3) excerpts from a commercially available videotape of a sign language conversation among deaf adults. This video got digitized at 720x480 and 29.97 fps, and the great majority of the MOV files that I excerpted from them  are 720x480 and 29.97 fps according to Mediainfo, although some are at 640x480 and 15 fps. In any case, none of these MOVs has had the white screen problem.

To Musicvid: I, too, had no intention to be confrontational, so please forgive me if I seemed so. I'm actually quite grateful to you, not just for the current help, but for past help, too, since I remember your name from consultations years ago. In any case, now that I am awake, and have done the promised test with one of the white-screen-vulnerable MOVs, I found that Adobe let me link to it (not embed it) without complaint, and it worked with no problem. So your re-naming proposal is vindicated, at least for linking, which is what I'm doing now anyway for other reasons) and it's a relief to know that that solution s there for me to use. Still, though, after having been grievously burned by Adobe in the past, I'm hoping to achieve results that are MP4 down to their core. What I refer to as burning me is a published article that I already have about this project - a PDF full of embedded MOV files that used to work fine till Adobe pulled the rug out from under it. Now its videos no longer work at all. Adobe has proven that they can look inside video files and spot the "MOVs in MP4 clothing", and who knows when they might decide to do so even in videos that are merely linked?

To JN-:Thanks for teaching me how do create a PATH to the current version of FFMPEG that resides in the QWinff folder. Once I did that, the latest line of code you suggested I put in the batch file enabled it to run successfully. There's a problem, though, because of the diversity that I describe above. I notice that the new line of code you suggested explicitly mentions 15 fps and 654x480 (actually 654:480). We can mostly handle this diversity, though, with different versions of MOV2MP4 since the file names of the three above categories are distinctive enough to enable me to select each batch separately; all those in category (1) have the word 'speech' in their names; those in category (2) have the word 'ASL' in their names, and those in category (3) have neither of those. So a different version of MOV2MP4 would apply to files in each category, with only the non-conformists in each category remaining to clean up later. The only problem is that the most recent line of code you suggested, although it did enable FFMPEG to run, and did successfully convert the MOVs to MP4s, the white screens are still there. But I assume this is a minor bug that can be fixed, no? Surely not because of the 655 vs 654 difference...

To Joelson_Forte: Your recommendation sounds promising, but which version to I download? I have a Win 10 64-bit Dell desktop computer purchased within the last two years. That narrows down the choice of which version to download, but I don't know if it has NVIDIA (or however it's spelled). I presume it does not fit the 'portable' category, which I assume refers to laptops and cell phones

Your files (.mov) have Sorenson 3 video codec and Qdesign 2 audio codec. In order to be in the

Haven't heard that Sorenson name in so long. Using their encoder used to be the way to upload to youtube in stereo and without the video being re-encoded by YT. Good times

To Joelson_Forte: Your recommendation sounds promising, but which version to I download? I have a Win 10 64-bit Dell desktop computer purchased within the last two years. That narrows down the choice of which version to download, but I don't know if it has NVIDIA (or however it's spelled). I presume it does not fit the 'portable' category, which I assume refers to laptops and cell phones

@Peyton-Todd

You can download the 64-bit version of the program which is the first that appears on the developer's website. This version is for ordinary computers that do not have a special video card.

@Peyton-Todd RE: Diversity. Yes, make several different versions of the same 3 line batch file, (obviously editing the internal frame size i.e. -vf scale for each one) then process groups of video clips accordingly. I would add the frame dimensions to the end of the batch filename and also to the end of all of the respective video clips. So MOV2MP4-[654x480].bat etc. This might seem tedious to do for the many video clips, but there are many file rename utils available, (to do en masse) even the windows file manager might do. I use Directory Opus for this type of quick renaming.

If its not an odd frame size like 655 you may simply leave out the -vf scale part altogether, it may only be required for that one. So you may only need two batch files, one with the explicit frame size and one without to cover all the rest. MOV2MP4-[ANY-FRAME-SIZE].bat.

@echo off
cls
for %%a in ("*.mov") do ffmpeg -y -i "%%a" -movflags faststart -crf 15 -b:a 384k "%%~na.mp4"

Where it comes in useful having a clear frame size as part of the filename is if you are making a project in VP. You might choose to put the different frame sizes on separate tracks all within the one project. So if you had to do any cropping in on the clips, you could do it on the respect track header, although, more tedious I know, better quality is preserved by doing any cropping at the event level.

Just fyi, I have been using this for a long time. (I work with audio / video production). Very useful:

Audio Spot - Convert Video, Replace Audio in Video, Converter | audio spot

To JN- I definitely prefer just two BATs since multiplying them detracts from the original goal of simplicity. And I'm willing to bet that two will be sufficient since the bulk of those in the first two categories have properties in common (keep in mind, though, that the 655 number applies to the MOVs; it is presumably irrelevant that the resulting MP4's have 654). The reason two should be enough is that the first two categories each have a distinctive part of their file names that enables us to select just that set of MOVs. The same is true of the third category, but since it never triggers the white screen problem they can be converted by existing apps. Before we craft the two magic apps, though, let's make sure they will solve the problem. As I said, while the most recent FFMPEG command line that you suggested did succeed in getting FFMPEG to convert the relevant set of MOVs to MP4, it did not succeed in removing the white screen. I'm beginning to suspect that FFMPEG may be simply incapable of this. As one of you mentioned (you yourself, maybe), FFMPEG is used under the covers by many such apps, possibly including the ones that I have tried up to now. Its use may in fact be the reason for their failure.

It might be useful (or if not useful then worth knowing) what the cause of the problem is. Could it be that the number of frames stated in the file headers exceeds the number of actual frames available, so that when the latter are exhausted, the app just shows a white screen till the number claimed by the header are reached?

To Phil_P: Thanks, I'll keep that solution in mind if the apps I don't have to pay for cannot solve the problem.

To Joelson_Forte: I have so far managed to install XMedia Recode, but am still learning how to use it...

@Peyton-Todd Well, I checked the last frame in the converted to mp4 file in VP, and its not just a white frame, its a valid frame. You can do the same, load up any one of the “white” converted to mp4 clips in VP and check out the last frame. If its a normal frame then everything is fine. If you are imbedding these videos in another app then you need to look elsewhere, as to the cause of the issue.