Most of us will probably have no idea MOD is, and that’s because camcorders aren’t as popular as they used to be. Today, most people tend to record videos with their smartphone or any other device that distributes MP4 files because this format is the standard.
Now, if for some reason you are using a device that records video in MOD, it is likely that you will have problems watching the video on your Windows 10 computer. There is no reason to go out and buy one. new camera at the moment as there are ways around the problem.
What we are going to do is convert the MOD file to MPG, or just use a media player that supports the format for playing videos.
What is a MOD video file?
OK, so MOD files are usually found when an old camcorder is used. Most of these are tape-less camcorders that use memory cards. Now, this file format is no longer used by camcorder companies, therefore, its support is quite poor.
Also, since MOD files are mostly MPEG-2 audio / video, converting to MPG should be a breeze. However, do not try to convert to MP4 as the final quality is lower than the original.
MOD MPG file conversion
Converting to MPG is super easy. The plan is to change the file extension from .mod to .mp4. To do this, right-click the file, then select Rename. If the file is TWC.mod, change it to TWC.mpg, then press the Enter key to start editing.
Now, if for some reason you don’t see the extension changing, we suggest that you force Windows 10 to display it.
We can do this by accessing Windows Explorer, and from there navigate to the location of the file. In the folder, click File> Change folder and search options and select View. In this section, you should see a check mark against Hide extensions for known file types. You will want to delete this check, then press the OK button.
Convert MOD to MPG using FFmpeg
First, you need to download FFmpeg from the official site. But before you do that, remember that this is a command line tool, so make sure you are comfortable with it before you go ahead.
After downloading the tool, you will want to open the command line environment as this is how FFmpeg is accessed. The next step is to type FFmpeg in the command line and press the Enter key. From there, use the following command to convert:
ffmpeg -f mpeg -i FILENAME.MOD -vcodec copy -acodec mp2 -ab 192k FILENAME.mpg
Sit back and wait for it to finish converting, then go ahead and try to play the video.
Watch MOD files in VLC Media Player
By now we should all know how important VLC Media Player is for watching video. The tool supports almost all media formats, and MOD is one of them. So, if you are not too keen to convert your MOD file to MPG, we suggest you watch the video using VLC.