Convert 3GP and 3G2 movies for iPhone with QuickTime 7 Pro

This FAQ discusses creating an Automator application to convert 3GP and 3G2 movies — via QuickTime® 7 Pro — to MP4 (.mp4) format for use on an iPhone® 5. The instructions and sample code were executed on a Mac Pro® (Late 2010) running OS X® 10.8.2. The resulting MP4 videos were transferred to an iPhone 5 via iTunes® Sync and play flawlessly in the Photos app.

One of the challenges of moving from an older mobile phone to an iPhone is the iPhone does not support the 3GP and 3G2 video recording formats of older phones. On my Mac Pro, I have 90 movies recorded with my Motorola® Krzr™ and Blackberry® Curve™ 8330 phones, all in 3GP format. I also have movies recoded by others whose phones used the 3G2 format. Putting these precious memories on my new iPhone 5 meant converting these movies to a supported video format, such as MP4.

While third-party software is available to convert these older formats to iPhone-compatible formats, the conversion can be accomplished with a bit of AppleScript® and Automator magic if you have a QuickTIme® 7 Pro key.

QuickTime Player 7 is an optional install for Mac OS X 10.6 and a free download for OS X 10.7 and 10.8. A QuickTime 7 Pro key is a registration code that unlocks a variety of media editing and exporting options in QuickTime Player 7. At the time of this writing, a Pro key is available from the Apple Store for US$ 29.99 . If you have QuickTime 7 Player installed and a Pro key, then the instructions in this FAQ will permit you to convert 3GP and 3G2 video formats to MP4 without additional software. If you do not have a Pro key, you may be able to find third-party conversion software that is free or less expensive, but I have never regretted paying for a Pro key: it has proved its worth to me many times in video format conversions.

One might be tempted to use the iPod touch and iPhone 3GS Export option of QuickTime Player, aka QuickTime X, to convert 3GP and 3G2 videos for use on an iPhone. QuickTime Player played the old videos, but those recoded with the Krzr played with distorted audio. Exporting these videos with QuickTime X likewise proved problematic: exported Krzr videos resulted in .m4v files without audio; exported Blackberry videos had both sound and video. These issues are due to the audio codecs used in the Krzr videos vs. those supported by QuickTime X.

QuickTime 7 Pro played Blackberry and Krzr videos perfectly, without audio distortion. Exporting these movies with the Movie to MPEG-4 output format produced perfect copies in MP4 (.mp4) format that also played flawlessly in QuickTime X. Therefore, my next task was creating a program for batch-converting the old movies to MP4 via QuickTime 7 Pro.

While QuickTime 7 Pro supports AppleScript, it does not provide Automator Actions. A combination of Automator and AppleScript is required. I have written many AppleScripts, primarily for text processing, but had not scripted QuickTime 7 Pro. Rather than start from scratch, I searched the Web for sample QuickTime 7 Pro scripts. My search uncovered a 28 March 2012 blog post by freelancer Peter Bartz entitled "Batch convert animated GIFs to videos using AppleScript/Automator/QuickTime 7 on OS X." Peter's excellent post was just the thing I needed. I modified Peter's sample code to create the following AppleScript to perform the conversion:

-- Determine if input was provided, otherwise prompt for files to process:
on run {inputFiles}
	if inputFiles is equal to {} then
		set inputFiles to (choose file with prompt "Select the file(s) to convert:" with multiple selections allowed without invisibles)
	end if
	open inputFiles
end run

-- Set default output folder, then prompt for an output folder:
on open droppedItems
	tell application "Finder" to set inputFolder to (container of first item of droppedItems) as Unicode text
	set outputFolder to (choose folder with prompt "Select output folder:" default location (inputFolder as alias)) as Unicode text

  -- Notify the user that existing output files with the same names as input files will be overwritten and moved to the Trash:
	
	display dialog "Note: Existing output files will be overwritten/moved to Trash!"
	
	tell application "QuickTime Player 7"
		activate
		close every window
	end tell
	
	-- Begin processing the dropped files in a loop until all have been converted:
	-- Strip ".3GP" or ".3G2" extension from input file names.
	-- Note: File names cannot contain "." characters before the extension

	repeat with currentItem in droppedItems
		tell application "Finder" to set fileName to name of currentItem as Unicode text
		set dotOffset to offset of "." in fileName
		set fileName to text 1 thru (dotOffset - 1) of fileName
		
		-- Open the current file in QuickTime Player 7.		
		tell application "QuickTime Player 7"
			open currentItem
		end tell
		
		-- Set the name of the output file:
		set outputFileName to (outputFolder & fileName & ".mp4")
		
		-- If the output file already exists in the output folder, move it to the Trash:
		tell application "Finder"
			if exists file outputFileName then
				delete file outputFileName
			end if
		end tell
		
		-- Perform the conversion:
		tell application "QuickTime Player 7"
			export front document to outputFileName as MPEG4 using default settings
			close front document
		end tell
	end repeat
	
	-- When all input files have been converted, Quit QuickTime Player 7:
	quit application "QuickTime Player 7"
end open

This AppleScript performs five tasks, as seen from the inline comments (lines beginning with "--" in the code above):

My thanks to Peter Bartz for permission to use the modified version of his sample code in this FAQ.



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