Video files cause grief in the same three ways every time. Your phone records HEVC clips that won’t import into your editor. A downloaded screen recording arrives as MKV when the project needs MP4. A 4K master is too big to email. Each problem is solved with a video converter, and in 2026 the best ones are free and open source.
This guide covers six tools that convert video formats on your PC reliably: FFmpeg, HandBrake, Shutter Encoder, LosslessCut, VLC Media Player, and iMovie for Mac. Five are open source, one (iMovie) is free on macOS. No watermarked output, no nag screens, no $80 a year subscription. All commands and steps were tested in May 2026 on Windows 11, macOS 14 (Apple Silicon), and Ubuntu 24.04.
Pick the right format and codec first
Before you convert anything, decide what container and codec you actually need. Picking wrong wastes time on a 30-minute encode that ends up in the bin.
| Use case | Container | Codec | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Universal playback (phones, browsers, TVs) | MP4 | H.264 | Plays on everything since 2010 |
| 4K, smaller file, recent devices | MP4 / MKV | HEVC (H.265) | About 50% smaller than H.264 at the same quality |
| Web upload, modern browsers, smallest size | MP4 / WebM | AV1 (SVT-AV1) | About 30% smaller than HEVC, royalty-free |
| Editing master / archival | MOV | ProRes 422 / DNxHR | High-quality intermediate, light on CPU during edit |
| Audio extraction | M4A / Opus | AAC / Opus | Voice memos, podcasts, music tracks |
If hardware acceleration matters (NVIDIA NVENC, Intel QSV, Apple VideoToolbox, AMD VCN), HandBrake and Shutter Encoder expose it via dropdowns; FFmpeg exposes it through encoder flags like -c:v hevc_nvenc or -c:v h264_videotoolbox. Pure software encoding (libx264, libx265, libsvtav1) gives the best quality per bit but takes longer.
FFmpeg: the one tool that converts everything
FFmpeg is the engine the rest of this list runs on. HandBrake, Shutter Encoder, and LosslessCut all call FFmpeg internally. Learning two or three commands makes you faster than any GUI for repetitive jobs, and unlocks formats no GUI exposes.
Install on each platform:
brew install ffmpeg # macOS (Homebrew)
sudo apt install ffmpeg # Ubuntu / Debian
sudo dnf install ffmpeg # Rocky / Alma 9 (after RPM Fusion)
winget install Gyan.FFmpeg # Windows 11If you’re on RHEL family, CFG has step-by-step guides for FFmpeg on Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux 9 and FFmpeg on Fedora. Confirm the install:
ffmpeg -versionFFmpeg 8 should print on the first line. The big jump in version 8 (“Huffman”, released August 2025) was the AV1 Vulkan encoder, native VVC decoding, ProRes RAW Vulkan support, and a multi-threaded CLI; in practice that means batch jobs finish in seconds instead of minutes on modern hardware.
The simplest possible conversion:
ffmpeg -i input.mov output.mp4That is the whole command. FFmpeg picks a sensible default codec for the output container (H.264 for MP4, VP9 for WebM, libvorbis for OGG). For more control, name the codec explicitly:
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -preset slow -c:a aac -b:a 192k output.mp4Two flags matter most. -crf sets the quality target where lower means higher quality; 18 to 23 is normal for H.264. -preset trades encoding speed for compression efficiency, with slow producing smaller files at the cost of CPU time.
For modern AV1 output (smaller files, royalty-free, plays in any 2024+ browser):
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libsvtav1 -crf 30 -preset 6 -c:a libopus output.mp4Hardware-accelerated HEVC on a recent NVIDIA card finishes in real time on 1080p source:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v hevc_nvenc -preset p6 -cq 23 -c:a copy output.mkvExtract audio without re-encoding (instant on multi-GB files). For deeper audio workflows, see the dedicated FFmpeg video-to-MP3 guide:
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vn -acodec copy audio.aacTrim a clip without re-encoding (also instant on multi-GB files):
ffmpeg -ss 00:01:30 -to 00:02:45 -i input.mp4 -c copy clip.mp4Batch-convert a folder of MOV files to MP4 in zsh or bash:
for f in *.mov; do
ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -c:a aac "${f%.mov}.mp4"
doneFFmpeg is the only tool here that scales from one file to thousands without writing a separate batch script for each project.
HandBrake: the best free GUI
HandBrake is what most people should install first. It’s a free, open-source video transcoder for Windows, macOS, and Linux that wraps FFmpeg behind a clean GUI with sensible presets. Pick “Fast 1080p30”, drag a file in, click Start. Done.
What changed in 2026: HandBrake 1.11 (March 2026) shipped ProRes and DNxHR encoders with MOV output, an AMD VCN AV1 10-bit encoder with a 4K preset, and VideoToolbox AV1 hardware decoding on Apple Silicon. The bundled FFmpeg jumped to 8.0.1 and SVT-AV1 to 4.0.1. If you’ve been encoding 4K HEVC on AMD hardware and felt slow, the 1.11 builds run noticeably faster.
Install on any platform:
flatpak install flathub fr.handbrake.ghb # Linux (any Flatpak distro)
brew install --cask handbrake # macOS
winget install HandBrake.HandBrake # Windows 11Then run a basic conversion:
- Open HandBrake and drop the source file (or a folder for a batch) into the queue.
- Pick a preset from the right panel. Start with “Fast 1080p30” for general use, “Matroska > AV1 MKV 1080p30” for the smallest files, or the new “Production > ProRes” group for editor-friendly intermediates.
- Set the destination folder and filename.
- Click “Add to Queue”, then “Start Queue” once everything is loaded.
The Video tab is where the quality vs size trade-off lives. RF 22 for H.264, RF 26 for HEVC, RF 30 for AV1 are reasonable starting points. Lower the RF for higher quality at the cost of file size.
Shutter Encoder: HandBrake’s batch-friendly cousin
Shutter Encoder is a free, open-source (GPL-3.0) FFmpeg-based GUI from Paul Pacifico, popular with video editors and broadcast professionals. Where HandBrake is opinionated and tight, Shutter Encoder is sprawling: it does conversion, lossless cuts, deinterlacing, framerate interpolation, subtitle burning, cut detection, and audio normalization in one window.
Version 20.1 (April 2026) added NVIDIA NVENC AV1 on Linux, fixing a long gap where AV1 hardware encoding on the GUI side was Windows and macOS only. The Linux .deb installs in two commands:
wget https://www.shutterencoder.com/files/Shutter-Encoder-amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./Shutter-Encoder-amd64.debFor macOS and Windows, grab the installers from shutterencoder.com.
The killer feature is the Function dropdown in the top-right. Pick “H.265”, drag a folder in, hit “Start function”. Or pick “Cut without re-encoding” to trim without quality loss. Or “Replace audio” to swap audio tracks across a folder. Each function is a one-line FFmpeg job exposed as a button, which is exactly what most non-coders doing batch work want.
LosslessCut: trim and merge without re-encoding
LosslessCut solves one problem perfectly: cutting and merging video and audio without re-encoding. Built on FFmpeg by Mikael Finstad and released under the GPL, it splits files at keyframe boundaries so a 10 GB drone clip trims in under a second instead of taking 20 minutes to re-encode.
Use it for: chopping the intro off a screen recording, merging two clips, removing dead air from a podcast recording, fixing a corrupt MOV header, extracting a single track from a multi-track Matroska file. The output is bit-for-bit identical to the source for the parts you keep.
Install:
brew install --cask losslesscut # macOS
flatpak install flathub no.mifi.losslesscut # Linux
winget install MifiOss.LosslessCut # Windows 11The 2026 builds (3.68 and later) ship Smart Cut, which re-encodes only the small segments around your in/out points so the cut lands on the exact frame instead of the nearest keyframe. For frame-accurate trims this is the difference between LosslessCut and FFmpeg’s -c copy approach.
VLC Media Player: already installed, fine for one-off jobs
You almost certainly already have VLC Media Player. It is not the fastest converter and the conversion dialog UI feels stuck in 2014, but for a one-off MKV-to-MP4 with no install required, it works.
- Open VLC and click Media > Convert / Save.
- Click Add, pick the source file, then click Convert / Save at the bottom of the dialog.
- Pick a profile (Video – H.264 + MP3 (MP4) is the safe default).
- Click the Browse button next to Destination file and choose a destination filename ending in
.mp4. - Click Start. The progress bar at the bottom of the main window reflects the conversion.
VLC’s conversion is single-threaded and slower than HandBrake or FFmpeg by an order of magnitude on the same file. Treat it as the “I just want this one MOV converted, leave me alone” option.
iMovie on Mac: free, built-in, hands-off
If you’re on a Mac and the file came off your iPhone, iMovie is already installed and handles the most common conversions without thinking about codecs. The catch: it only outputs to MP4 (H.264 or HEVC) and the format choices are abstracted into “Low / Medium / High / Best”.
- Open iMovie and choose File > New Movie.
- Click Import Media and pick the source file.
- Drag the imported clip into the timeline.
- Click the Share button (top right) and pick Export File.
- Set quality and resolution, click Next, then Save to your Movies folder.
Use iMovie when the source is a phone recording and the target is “play this anywhere”. For anything else, HandBrake gives you more control with the same level of friction. Mac users who want a better player to verify their conversions should look at IINA, the modern macOS video player.
Which tool to convert video formats on your PC
Pick from the table based on what the job actually is, not what’s familiar.
| Job | Best tool | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Convert one file, no install | VLC | Already on every machine |
| Convert one file, best balance of quality and effort | HandBrake | Sensible presets, decent speed, good defaults |
| Convert 200 files overnight | FFmpeg + shell loop | Scales to any number of files |
| Trim a long clip in seconds | LosslessCut | No re-encode, instant output |
| Multi-step batch (cut, normalize, encode) | Shutter Encoder | One window, function dropdown |
| iPhone clip to MP4 on Mac | iMovie | Already installed |
| Smallest file size in 2026 | FFmpeg + libsvtav1, or HandBrake AV1 | AV1 beats HEVC by about 30% at the same quality |
| 4K HEVC on NVIDIA hardware | FFmpeg + hevc_nvenc, or HandBrake | GPU encode finishes in real time |
| Editor master file (ProRes / DNxHR) | HandBrake 1.11+ | New ProRes and DNxHR encoders shipped March 2026 |
Most people end up with HandBrake for one-off jobs and FFmpeg for everything that repeats. Add LosslessCut once you discover how often you need to trim something without waiting for a re-encode. Shutter Encoder fills the gap for non-coders who do batch work weekly. The proprietary tools that used to dominate this category mostly charge $40 to $100 a year for what these five open-source tools do for free, with the same codecs and (in many cases) the same FFmpeg engine inside.
If your work moves into editing rather than conversion, the next tool to look at on Linux is Lightworks, a non-linear editor that’s been used on feature films and runs on Ubuntu, Debian, and Mint.
