Play MP4 on Chromebook

Have some MP4 files from your PC or Mac and wish to play them on Chromebook with its built-in video players. However, you may be disappointed to find that you can successfully play some MP4 files on it but fail to do that with other MP4 file types. The following article will show you how to get any MP4 files played on Chromebook with great success.

Solution 1: Install a video player app such as VLC from the Chrome Store

The version of VLC for Chrome devices is a modified version of VLC for Android which takes advantage of the Google's App Runtime for Chrome. VLC for Chrome OS plays most local video and audio files, network streams. Supported formats include MKV, MP4, AVI, MOV, Ogg, FLAC, TS, M2TS, Wv and AAC.

Solution 2: Trancode MP4 to Chromebook supported format

If the installed VLC still can't solve your problem, it would be much ideal for you to convert your MP4 video to a format that Chromebook supports. From Chromebook supported video/audio codec,we can see that although Chromebook supports the MP4 container file format, however, it only allows you to play MP4 file encoded with either MPEG-4 or H.264 compression codec. If the MP4 file are encoded with other incompatible codec such as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, H.265, WMV/VC-1, etc. Chromebook will fail to read that.

The good news is that you can easily fix the codec incompatible issue by downloading our best Chromebook Video Converter - Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate, which can assist you to transcode all MP4 files compressed with all the unsupported video and audio codec to Chromebook native compatible MP4 format encoded with H.264 or MPEG-4 video codec .

Thanks to its batch conversion mode, so that you can load multiple MP4 files into the application for conversion at one time. For advanced users, you can get better output video and audio quality by flexibly adjusting output profile parameters such as video codec, bit rate, frame rate, resolution and audio codec, bit rate, sample rate, channels in the program's "Profile Settings" window according to your own preference.

For Mac users, you can switch to download Pavtube iMedia Converter for Mac to perform the conversion on macOS High Sierra, macOS Sierra, Mac OS X El Capitan, Mac OS X Yosemite, Mac OS X Mavericks, etc.

Step by Step to Convert MP4 for Chromebook Viewing

Step 1: Load unsupported MP4 files into the application.

Download the free trial version of the program. Launch it on your computer. Click "File" menu and select "Add Video/Audio" or click the "Add Video" button on the top tool bar to import source MP4 files into the program.

Load source MP4 files

Step 2: Set output file format.

Tap on the "Format" bar, select one of Chromebook playable file formats such as "H.264 HD Video(*.mp4)" under "HD Video" main category.

Output Chromebook supported playing formats

Step 3: Adjust to output Chromebook supported audio codec.

Click "Settings" to open "Profile" settings window, in audio section, from "Codec" drop-down list, select Chromebook compatible audio codec such as "aac". You can also tweak other settings such as video bit rate, frame rate, resolution, audio bit rate, sample rate and channels according to your own needs.

Output Chromebook supported audio codec

Step 4: Begin the conversion process.

After all setting is compelted, press the "Convert" button in the right-bottom and MP4 to Chromebook conversion process will start automatically.

When the conversion is over, click "Open output folder" to pop out the converted files, you will then have no problem to play converted files on Chromebook.

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