A few questions come to mind: (1) How can I tell which format a particular video file is using I realize that.mov and.avi are containers, not formats (2) Which format is likely to have the most longevity, i.e. slowest bitrot, for the future H264 (3) Which tools do the best job at transcoding media to those formats.
Mojave currently includes legacy support for QuickTime 7, so if you have old media files which rely on that and its codecs, now is the time to convert those to formats which will be supported in macOS 10.15.
Quicktime 7 Pro Upgrade To Those
You should upgrade to those and check your old media files in the coming weeks.
Those files which use formats and codecs not supported in macOS 10.15 are likely to become unusable when you have upgraded to that in the autumnfall.
Quicktime 7 Pro Movie Gives Comparable
Its matching article covering iMovie gives comparable information for that app.
Its possible that some vendors may port codecs or other tools to 10.15 to support some of them in the future, although this looks unlikely at present.
They arent included in Mojaves System Information under its Legacy Software section, which only seems to cover apps and similar bundles.
Most, perhaps all, of those listed in the Components section are provided in 32-bit form and will be unavailable in macOS 10.15, but there doesnt appear to be any listing of formats which are supported in QuickTime X.
Use this to scan the classic QuickTime folders of LibraryQuickTime and SystemLibraryQuickTime, and youll see that each and every codec in them is 32-bit only, thus doomed.
Because QuickTime X uses a different mechanism to incorporate codecs, I cant see any way of discovering exactly which formats will remain supported.
Until the release of 10.15, its not clear how successful that might be, but Im sure that VMWare will be working very hard on it.
QuickTime Player 10 doesnt even come close, not in a million years.
Quicktime 7 Pro made it so easy to easily and quickly edit out crap you didnt want in a video and save it.
QTX, all it does is let you take a clip of what you want and not as flexible.
I argued this with Apple through a bug report and they never did make any changes.
Ruined Quicktime in my eyes because of this small but powerful feature.
Being able to use the little tick marks to go frame by frame and select the video you didnt want and delete it was a great thing Looks like I wont be upgrading.
Most support seems to be built into system frameworks and macOS, and Im not sure how you can add codecs something which used to be simple, of course.
I also dont know how difficult it would be to port a 32-bit codec to 64-bit.
For some code, this appears to be very difficult, which always surprises me.
But I havent written 32-bit-dependent code for over 20 years.
Howard.
Combine this with a finder search for suitable file extensions like.mov and you have a crude system for converting what you have.
I have lots of old home videos, etc., that Id really hate to lose.
As a non-Final Cut Pro user, I feel like Im particularly vulnerable to this type of change.
H264 (3) Which tools do the best job at transcoding media to those formats.