What is a .mov file?
video/quicktime
MOV is Apple's QuickTime container, introduced in 1991 and the direct ancestor of MP4. ISO adopted its box structure as the basis of ISOBMFF, so the two are close relatives rather than rivals. Beyond video and audio it carries timecode tracks, edit lists, and reference movies — files of a few kilobytes that play only where the media they point at still lives. It also carries codecs MP4 does not, notably ProRes and Animation with a true alpha channel, which keeps it the working format of professional editing.
How to use a .mov file
Use an example MOV to test QuickTime box parsing, timecode and edit-list handling, and MOV-to-MP4 remuxing — confirming that a stream copy is chosen when the codecs allow it, that an alpha channel survives where the target supports one, and that a reference movie is not mistaken for self-contained media.
Download example .mov files
- MOV — QuickTime H.264 ClipThe clip in a QuickTime (MOV) container with H.264 video — Apple's container, common from cameras and editors. For testing MOV parsing and MOV→MP4 conversion.
- Codec — ProRes-Compatible MezzanineThe shared pan-city base plate encoded with FFmpeg prores_ks, profile 0 (proxy). An intra-only 10-bit 4:2:2 mezzanine written by FFmpeg's prores_ks encoder — the interchange shape editorial workflows expect. Described as ProRes-COMPATIBLE deliberately: this is FFmpeg's independent implementation, not Apple's encoder. Every clip in this group carries the identical picture, so a decoder-support matrix built from them isolates the codec as the only variable.
- Container — QuickTimeOne H.264 elementary stream wrapped in QuickTime. Every file in this group was produced from the SAME encode with a stream copy, so the compressed video bytes are identical and the container is genuinely the only difference. Apple's container, and the direct ancestor of MP4 — the two share the same atom structure, which is why remuxing between them is nearly free.