How to save your videos as MP4 files

Did you purchase our hassle free editing service? If so, you were asked to convert your videos to MP4 before uploading. Keep reading to learn how to do this!

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What are MP4 files? MP4 files are a high-compression (space saving) video format that works great to send us your files! Here are the steps to convert your videos to MP4 files.

First time only:
a. Download VLC Media player if you don’t already have it downloaded. You can download it at this link: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html
b. Open VLC.
c. In the top menu, click “Tools”, then “Preferences”.
d. Click on the “Input / Codecs” tab at the top.
e. Under the “Files” section, beside “Record directory or filename”, click on the “Browse…” button.
f. Choose an empty folder, or create one, for your converted files to be saved to. Make sure to take note of where this is, because your converted files will be saved here.
g. Close and open VLC Media Player for the changes to take effect.

Every time you want to convert a file:
a. Move any files you want converted to the folder you created above (you can do multiple files, or single ones).
b. In the top menu, click on “Media”, then “Convert/Save”.
c. Click add on the right side of the pop-up box.
d. You can select 1 or more of your videos that you need converted.
e. Click “Convert/Save”.
f. On the dropdown box beside the word Profile, choose “Video -H.264 + MP3 (MP4)”.
g. Click the checkbox that says “Append ‘-converted’ to filename”.
Note: if you selected only one file, you will then need to click on Browse at the bottom right, navigate to the folder you created earlier, and name your file, then click save.
h. Click start.
i. Wait while VLC converts the files. (You can tell by watching the very top – if it says Converting… then it is still loading, but if it says VLC media player, then it has finished loading.)
j. Browse to the folder you set up earlier to find your converted files. They will be the original file name, with "-converted" added to the end of the file name.

That's it! You now have your files converted. We hope this helps you! If you have any issues, please feel free to reach out to us at: editing@avirtualchristmas.com and we will help you in any way we can.

If you haven't purchased A Virtual Christmas yet, please check out our pricing page!

We hope you have a very merry Virtual Christmas!