Rubenerd

Recently I learned that VP9 video can be re-containerised to something other than webm, without re-encoding the original video and/or audio. This is useful for importing into tools that support the VP9 codec, but not the webm container.

Recent versions of ffmpeg(1) have a -c copy shorthand for instructing the audio and video encoders to just copy the source:

$ ffmpeg -i example.webm -c copy example.mp4

Note that you’ll get an error if you try to output to a mov container, as I’ve seen plenty of bloggers and forum posts erroneously suggest:

[mov @ 0xHEX] vp9 only supported in MP4

ffmpeg can also re-containerise into my preferred Matroska, which I’ve also since learned is the format on which webm is based:

$ ffmpeg -i example.webm -c copy example.mkv  

Tools like DaVinci Resolve can now import your VP9 video, albeit with variable results. You may need to re-encode entirely if the output is garbled.

$ ffmpeg -i example.webm example.h264.mp4