One of the essences of Apple operating systems is the simplicity to carry out any task. It is not surprising that in recent years it has gained many followers simply because of this virtue. Formerly both videos and music were seen mainly on the computer and sometimes on the mobile. But currently we have countless media to play them such as the iPod, iPad and Apple TV.
At that moment Apple must have realized that a converter was necessary to be able to see and listen to our files on any computer to which we had access. Then the option is born "Encode selected video / audio files"
We will do this, so that the file is one hundred percent compatible with the Apple ecosystem. Therefore, this function will be used not just to play on iTunes and QuickTime (no matter what medium it is: iOS, tvOS), if not so that other Apple programs recognize it when we have to use it. For example, it must be in an Apple format if we want to use a video in iTunes, iMovie or GarageBand, to give a few examples.
The first will be find the option. To do this, we access the Finder and look for the file to convert. At this moment we can click on the right button of the mouse or trackpad and select Encode selected video / audio files (the system detects if it is a video or an audio and it will only put video or audio). We can also go to the button on the Finder bar with a clock wheel and the same contextual menu will open.
Pressing the option a small menu appears, which will indicate:
- If we code video lesson. We choose quality. At least from the Mac I write, the minimum quality is 480p up to AppleProRes (which is Apple's highest quality format), to work generally in video editing. As a second option, we can choose between: format with maximum compatibility or maximum quality.
- If we code audio. Again we can choose the quality. In this case: High Quality, iTunes Plus, Apple Lossless (no encoding), or Talking Podcast. In the audio option, we can also say the place of destination or by default the same as the origin. On the other hand, it asks us if we want to delete the original file after the conversion.
It's that simple, for a simple conversion you don't need additional conversion programs. You will have that video or melody ready to share it with iTunes playlists, send it by iMessage, play it on any Apple computer or use it in any Apple program. But if a recipient is not Apple, they can also use it because they are very conventional formats.