Convert MOV to HEVC — Free Online Tool
Convert MOV files to raw HEVC/H.265 bitstreams directly in your browser, re-encoding with the libx265 codec for dramatically smaller file sizes at comparable visual quality. HEVC's superior compression makes this ideal when you need to strip away QuickTime's container overhead and deliver efficient H.265 video for archival or distribution.
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FFmpeg Command
Copy this command to run the same conversion locally with FFmpeg on your desktop. Download FFmpeg
Drop your MOV file here
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Free — no uploads, no signups. Your files never leave your browser.
Settings
Note: Browser-based encoding uses approximate quality targets. For precise CRF compression, copy the FFmpeg command above and run it on your desktop.
Estimated output:
Conversion Complete!
DownloadHow It Works
This conversion performs a full video re-encode: the video stream inside your MOV file — whether it was originally H.264, ProRes, or another codec — is decoded and re-compressed using the libx265 encoder into a raw HEVC bitstream (.hevc). Unlike remuxing, this is computationally intensive because every frame is fully re-analyzed and re-compressed using H.265's more advanced prediction algorithms. Audio tracks, subtitles, chapter markers, and QuickTime metadata are not carried into the output, because the raw .hevc format is a bare video bitstream with no container structure to hold them. The default CRF of 28 targets a quality level roughly equivalent to H.264 at CRF 23, exploiting HEVC's roughly 40–50% bitrate savings for equivalent perceptual quality.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg program. In this browser tool, FFmpeg runs as a WebAssembly binary (FFmpeg.wasm) directly in your browser with no server involvement; the same command can be pasted into a terminal on any desktop system with FFmpeg installed. |
-i input.mov
|
Specifies the input file — your QuickTime MOV file. FFmpeg will detect the MOV container and demux whichever video codec is stored inside it (commonly H.264, but possibly ProRes or others) before passing the decoded frames to the HEVC encoder. |
-c:v libx265
|
Sets the video encoder to libx265, the open-source H.265/HEVC encoder. This tells FFmpeg to fully re-encode the video stream from the MOV using HEVC compression, regardless of what codec the source MOV contained. |
-crf 28
|
Sets the Constant Rate Factor for the libx265 encoder to 28, which is the recommended default quality level for HEVC and is perceptually comparable to H.264 at CRF 23. Lower values (toward 0) increase quality and file size; higher values (toward 51) reduce both. |
-x265-params log-level=error
|
Passes the log-level=error parameter directly to the libx265 encoder, suppressing its verbose per-frame encoding statistics and progress messages while still surfacing any actual errors. This keeps the console output readable without affecting the encoded video. |
output.hevc
|
Specifies the output filename with the .hevc extension, which tells FFmpeg to write a raw Annex B HEVC bitstream with no container. No audio, metadata, subtitles, or chapter information from the original MOV will be present in this file. |
Common Use Cases
- Archiving iPhone or Final Cut Pro MOV footage in HEVC format to cut storage requirements roughly in half compared to keeping the original H.264 MOV files
- Preparing a raw H.265 bitstream for a custom media server or hardware player that ingests bare HEVC streams rather than QuickTime-wrapped video
- Stripping a MOV file down to a pure HEVC bitstream for academic or research purposes, such as testing H.265 decoder implementations
- Converting large drone footage MOV files recorded in H.264 to HEVC to reduce the bitrate before uploading to a bandwidth-limited platform
- Producing a compact HEVC sample clip from a QuickTime master for streaming quality tests or codec comparison benchmarks
- Re-encoding a MOV recording captured at high bitrate into a more storage-efficient HEVC bitstream for long-term cold storage
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes — the .hevc output format is a raw video bitstream and has no container structure capable of storing audio tracks, subtitles, or metadata. All audio from your MOV file will be discarded during this conversion. If you need to preserve audio alongside H.265 video, consider converting to MKV or MP4 with the libx265 codec instead, both of which can wrap HEVC video and audio together.
CRF values are codec-specific and are not directly comparable across codecs. For libx265, a CRF of 28 is generally considered to produce perceptual quality equivalent to libx264 at CRF 23, because H.265's more efficient compression algorithms achieve better quality at the same numerical CRF setting relative to H.264. Lowering the CRF value toward 0 will increase quality and file size, while raising it toward 51 will decrease both.
Yes — adjust the -crf value in the command to control quality and file size. Lower values produce higher quality at larger file sizes (CRF 18 is near-visually lossless for most content), while higher values compress more aggressively (CRF 35–40 noticeably degrades quality). For archival use, CRF 18–22 is common; for web distribution where file size matters more, CRF 28–32 is typical. You can also set CRF 0 for mathematically lossless HEVC encoding.
The libx265 encoder can preserve HDR10 metadata and wide color gamut information if it is present in the source MOV file, but this depends on how the conversion is configured. The basic command on this page does not explicitly pass HDR metadata flags such as -color_primaries, -color_trc, or -colorspace. If your MOV source is HDR footage from a professional camera, you may need to add those flags manually in the FFmpeg command to ensure correct HDR signaling in the output bitstream.
The command shown targets a single file, but you can adapt it for batch processing in a shell script. On Linux or macOS, wrap it in a loop: for f in *.mov; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v libx265 -crf 28 -x265-params log-level=error "${f%.mov}.hevc"; done. On Windows, a similar for loop in PowerShell or a .bat file achieves the same result. The browser-based tool processes one file at a time, but the copied FFmpeg command runs without restrictions on your desktop.
Converting to a raw HEVC bitstream requires a full re-encode of every video frame using the libx265 encoder, which is significantly more computationally demanding than H.264 encoding. H.265 uses more sophisticated inter-frame prediction, larger coding tree units, and more complex entropy coding — all of which require more CPU time per frame. If encoding speed is critical, you can add -preset ultrafast or -preset fast to the FFmpeg command, which trades some compression efficiency for dramatically faster encoding.
Technical Notes
The .hevc file extension denotes a raw Annex B HEVC bitstream — there is no container wrapping the video, meaning no audio, no subtitles, no chapter markers, and no QuickTime or MOV metadata survive the conversion. This is a deliberate characteristic of the format, not a limitation of the tool. Because MOV is a flexible container that can hold many different video codecs (including H.264, Apple ProRes, MJPEG, or even already-encoded H.265), the input must always be fully decoded and re-encoded regardless of what codec was originally stored inside the MOV. The -x265-params log-level=error flag suppresses the verbose per-frame statistics that libx265 normally prints to stderr, which keeps console output clean without affecting the encoded output. For maximum compatibility with devices that play raw HEVC bitstreams, the output conforms to the HEVC Main profile by default; if you need Main10 for 10-bit HDR content, add -pix_fmt yuv420p10le to the command. Files processed by this tool never leave your device — FFmpeg runs entirely in your browser via WebAssembly.