Convert Videos (MP4, MPEG, or MOV) to WEBM

By  on  

In an effort to make the web and media more efficient, developers and corporations everywhere are investing effort in creating better file formats and delivery streams.  One of the more impressive video formats I've seen is the WEBM file format.  WEBM files are quite small but the quality is still impressive.  If you're ready to support and serve WEBM, here's how you can convert your traditional file format videos to WEBM!

You're going to use ffmpeg, as you could probably guess.  Thanks to a tip from the Theme Foundry, here's the shell command magic that will convert your video to WEBM:

ffmpeg -i trailer.mov -c:v libvpx -crf 10 -b:v 1M -c:a libvorbis trailer.webm

A comparison of quality is the same but the comparison in file size is fractional.

Supporting WEBM on Apache Servers

You may need to add support to your Apache server for WEBM since it's a newer format. Here's how I added WEBM support via .htaccess:

AddType video/webm webm

WEBM will be a great format moving forward and I look forward to seeing our legacy formats leave while new formats take over.  It's a true sign that the future is mobile!

Recent Features

  • By
    Camera and Video Control with HTML5

    Client-side APIs on mobile and desktop devices are quickly providing the same APIs.  Of course our mobile devices got access to some of these APIs first, but those APIs are slowly making their way to the desktop.  One of those APIs is the getUserMedia API...

  • By
    Send Text Messages with PHP

    Kids these days, I tell ya.  All they care about is the technology.  The video games.  The bottled water.  Oh, and the texting, always the texting.  Back in my day, all we had was...OK, I had all of these things too.  But I still don't get...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Animated AJAX Record Deletion Using Dojo

    I'm a huge fan of WordPress' method of individual article deletion. You click the delete link, the menu item animates red, and the item disappears. Here's how to achieve that functionality with Dojo JavaScript. The PHP - Content & Header The following snippet goes at the...

  • By
    CSS Text Overlap

    One of the important functions of CSS is to position elements. Margin, padding, top, left, right, bottom, position, and z-index are just a few of the major players in CSS positioning. By using the above spacing...

Discussion

  1. MaxArt

    WebM is indeed an impressive format that only needs some wider support, starting from Microsoft – but it won’t happen any time soon, I guess. Same story for WebP, that could replace png, jpeg and even animated gifs.

    • Supposedly mozjpeg is better than webp too!

  2. Hi,

    Is there anyway to create webm video from pptx?

  3. Bushwazi

    First time commenter, long time reader…

    I used FireFogg to generate webm videos as well: http://firefogg.org/

  4. Tonya Rose

    Awesome! I just learned how to edit webm files from this: http://www.videostudiopro.com/en/pages/webm-file/ and I wanted to convert some mp4 files to webm and practice a bit. I tried your way and it works great! Thanks for the tip!

  5. Shifflett Kristen

    Thank you for these instructions, really helpful!! I used to convert MP4 video to Webm video with Acethinker video converter, It is a cloud based software to convert videos without install any software in your device. Share it here as an alternative method.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!