Help with iPhone MOV files not playing on PC?

Frustrating problem. Running around Reddit and the inter webs have not yielded a solution. TGR is my last hope…

iPhone videos of a recent bike trip. Recorded with the iPhone settings set to High Efficiency (not on Most Compatible). Then imported with the setting in Photos under Transfer set to Keep Originals (not Automatic).

This has resulted a bunch of the trip videos (MOV files) not being able to be played on the PC they were imported to. I’ve tried downloading codecs. I downloaded the K Lite codec pack into MP Classic and that still can’t open them. Any ideas?

Hopefully someone out there has some esoteric knowledge in this field. Sucks to lose trip footage.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by EWG

Recorded with the iPhone settings set to High Efficiency (not on Most Compatible).

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This is your problem. Uncheck that box if you want to ease of use of photos and videos outside the Apple ecosystem. Apple sucks.


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

I’m not familiar with the ins and outs and what have yous here, are the pc’s running windows 98?

if nothing else works download vlc and follow the directions for convert/save. you should be able to get them into mp4 or whatever is easiest.

they’re definitely not “lost”

Yeah, I've unchecked the box for moving forward. I thought I had already done that but it might have gotten rechecked when I got a new phone.

I'm on windows 11. I tried VLC and that can't open them, but maybe it can convert them anyway. Seems unlikely but I'll try it.

If I leave the import selection on automatic it converts the videos to a format that the computer can read while it imports them, but it keeps crashing about a 10th of the way through the import - which is a known issue. So I may have to import 585 videos in batches of 5 at a time to try to find the problem ones. I'm pretty fucking frustrated.

I think the problem is that I need to install an HEVC extension but that's only available from the Microsoft store and it won't let me download it because it says it's not compatible with my hardware, despite the computer being like around years old.

The K-Lite codec pack *should* work. Especially the version that comes with a copy of MediaPlayerClassic
https://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

Otherwise, an option that should work for both photos and videos is to install Google Photos app on your phone, sync those videos to Google Photos, and then download from there. Let google figure out the conversion process for you.