Catalina message "lacks encoder: <empty>"

[andrewzboard]

I updated my laptop to OSX Catalina (10.15), and VLC to 3.0.8. When I try to Convert a .mov file, I get the following error message:

It seems your Libav/FFmpeg (libavcodec) installation lacks the following encoder:

(With nothing after the trailing colon.)

So what could I be missing?

More background: QuickTime no longer opens the .mov files that it used to convert-while-opening. I am getting the .mov files from other team members. The app MediaInfo reports that they have RLE (I presume run-length-encoded) video and PCM audio. Perhaps if I ask the animators to export in a different format? My alternative is to get a cheap, old MacBook and use the older tools.

[ePirat]

Can you share more details about what exactly are you trying to convert? MOV to which format/codec combination? Additionally a verbose log would help very much!

[andrewzboard]

Short answer is MOV to H.264 + MP3 (.m4v suffix). I did confirm using ffmpeg that i could extract the individual frames.

But the longer answer is I tried again today (saving log output etc.) and it worked. (Of course converted version lost alpha channel, I was expecting that.) Versions didn't change. I have been through some reboot cycles so who knows if that changed the environment. Thanks for taking the time to respond (and prompting me to try again).