YouTube to MP4 — Preview Links, Convert Your Own Videos

Preview a link, convert your own file — both paths

YouTube to MP4 works two ways at once: it previews any YouTube link with official oEmbed metadata, and it converts video files you already own into H.264 MP4 locally in your browser. The preview path takes a URL and returns the title, channel and thumbnail without touching any stream. The converter path takes a file from your disk — an editor export, an OBS recording, a phone clip — and re-encodes it with H.264 video and AAC audio. A 90-second 1080p export at a typical 10 Mbps works out to roughly 110 MB, converted on your CPU at about real-time speed. Ultrafast encoding keeps the wait short, and quality lands close to source for typical clips.

The line this tool won't cross is stream ripping — saving other people's YouTube videos breaks the platform's terms, so it doesn't attempt it and says so plainly. Need your own uploads as files? YouTube Studio downloads your originals directly, and Google Takeout bulk-exports a whole channel. Everything else here is for footage already on your disk, which covers more real situations than you'd expect: re-encoding old exports, fixing formats an editor refuses, making upload-ready MP4s. No queue, no upload bar, no account — even a spotty connection doesn't slow the job, because the file never leaves the machine.