Indication

Maskelyne Video and audio converter for Mac

Name: Maskelyne
Availability: InStock

Converts audio and video from one form into another, cleanly.

Drop a file in and name the form you want back. Maskelyne converts it here on your Mac, shows you the size of the result before it starts, and — where the codec already suits the container — copies the streams across untouched rather than encoding them again.

Download on the Mac App Store

Batch No. 0356 macOS iPadOS · iOS — in preparation Poison

What the dose does

How it converts the file

Three honest choices

High, Balanced or Small, with the size of the finished file estimated before you start and revised as you change your mind. The full settings — bitrate, resolution, frame rate, channels, sample rate — are there when you want them, folded away when you do not.

II.

Lossless where it can be

When the source codec already suits the container you asked for, there is nothing to re-encode. Maskelyne notices, copies the streams across untouched, and tells you why it was fast — a file that would have taken minutes lands in seconds, bit for bit the same.

III.

Audio, lifted out

Getting the sound out of a video is a button, not a setting buried in a format menu. Choose M4A, WAV, AIFF or CAF, pick which audio track when a file carries more than one, and take the whole thing or a trimmed range.

On the bench

Maskelyne at work

What it takes, and what it must refuse

Ailment & cure

Before the dose, after the dose

The ailment

A video that will not play, and nothing that says why
A progress bar that sits at 99% for a quarter of an hour
A whole file encoded again when only its wrapper was wrong

The cure

The format named plainly, and a copy in one that plays
Progress that means something, and a time remaining worth reading
The streams copied across untouched, done in seconds

Directions for use

Frequently asked

Which formats does it read and write?

It reads what macOS reads: MOV, MP4, M4V, MP3, M4A, WAV, AIFF, CAF and others besides. It writes MP4, MOV and M4V for video, and M4A, WAV, AIFF or CAF for audio. MP3 is the odd one out — macOS ships an MP3 decoder and no MP3 encoder, so MP3 comes in and can never go out. MKV, WebM, FLAC, OGG, AVI and WMV are not supported at all, and a file in one of those is refused by name, never described as broken. It is not broken; we simply cannot read it.

Is there a subscription?

No. Maskelyne is free to use — one file at a time, out to MP4 or M4A, at full quality, never watermarked and never time-limited. Drop in more than one and the rest are held rather than turned away; each starts as the one in front of it finishes. A single one-time purchase unlocks the rest: the whole format matrix, the batch queue, audio extraction, trim, track selection, encoder settings and saved presets. Nothing to cancel, nothing that renews.

Will converting cost me quality?

Only when something actually has to be re-encoded. Where the source codec suits the container, the streams are copied rather than encoded and the result is identical to what went in. Where a re-encode is unavoidable, High keeps close to the original, and WAV, AIFF or ALAC give you audio with nothing thrown away at all.

Where do my files go?

Nowhere. Your media never leaves your Mac — every conversion happens on this machine, there is no account, no sign-in and nothing uploaded. The originals are read and left where they are; the copy is written where you say.

An alternative to uploading a video to convert it

The rest of the shelf

Different symptom, same cabinet.

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