Wyze apparently saves its time-lapse to .h264 format. I’m trying import it into iMovie from the SD card. But iMovie doesn’t want to take it. Suggestions? Do I need to download another converter program to convert h264 to mp4? Unfortunate if the case.
I haven’t found anything yet iSkysoft Video Converter can’t handle
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I’ll check it out, thanks. I guess this is the usual route taken when importing a time lapse file? Seems overly cumbersome.
I just did a short time lapse on one of my V2 cameras to be sure.
The file format is a .mp4 file.
The video format is h264
h264 is the normal video format for most .mp4 files. Very surprising that iMovie can’t read that file format.
Weird… I got .mp4 under Android, but .mov under iOS on the WCO. Haven’t checked v2 files.
The open source application ffmpeg can convert the .h264 file into pretty much any format, from mp4 to prores to a gif. I captured a 2-week-plus timelapse with my wyzecam outdoor that would not save to my phone from the app, so pulled the .h264 file from the card and simply rewrapped it into an mp4 file using the following command:
ffmpeg -i /Users/myusername/Desktop/20210313183231.h264 -vcodec copy /Users/myusername/Desktop/20210313183231.mp4
That took the video from the .h264 file and plopped it into a .mp4 container without re-transcoding, the process was nearly instantaneous. The new file worked with Quicktime Player, Finder QuickViews, Photos, Messages, and undoubtedly iMovie would have no problem dealing with it.
That command may look long if you’re not used to the Terminal, but you could think of that command in a shortened form as:
ffmpeg -i inputfile -vcodec copy outputfile
And to get those long paths and filenames right, you can drag files from the Finder right into the Terminal window instead of typing the input filename, and then drag the same file in when your cursor is at the point at which you’d type the output filename and then edit the dragged-in filename to change its extension to .mp4.
On the mac you can easily install ffmpeg using the homebrew package system, You follow the instructions here to install homebrew:
And then after homebrew is installed, this command at the command line will install ffmpeg and all of its dependencies:
brew install ffmpeg
Hope this helps.
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