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Comment by cloudking | Hacker News Reader

Spent hours solving the same problem, landed on this tool: https://rotato.app/tools/converter

It will take transparent MP4/MOV as input and output compatible versions for Safari (HEVC) and Chrome (WEBM). Then you simply use a tag that includes both e.g:

    <video playsinline preload="metadata">
      <source src="video.mp4" type="video/mp4; codecs=hvc1">
      <source src="video.webm" type="video/webm">
    </video>

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It's worth reading the section of the article that details why this isn't a great solution: https://jakearchibald.com/2024/video-with-transparency/#vp9-...

It works fine in practice, the reason they're struggling is they don't know about Apple's avconvert command is the only real route to do it.

avconvert -p PresetHEVCHighestQualityWithAlpha -s ./input.mov -o ./output.mov

is the trick

They do know about avconvert (I am the article author).

avconvert gives you almost no control over the output. You'll end up with a file orders of magnitude bigger than the alternatives covered in the article.

Compressor is the next best thing, as it gives you some control, but you still end up with a file multiples bigger than the ideal solution.

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