I recently became a very satisfied owner of a Mobotix One camera. The only problem was the somewhat cumbersome handling of MXG video files. Playback only really works with Mobotix’s own software; even VLC has issues. Exporting with MxMC (macOS) also doesn’t produce good results for me (image freezes). Converting via FFmpeg is not trivial, but after extensive trial and error, I found a solution that I’d like to share to maybe save other users time.
Problem: ffmpeg and other standard tools fail when converting Mobotix MXG files, showing “Duration: N/A” and aborting the process.
Solution using FFmpeg:
ffmpeg -f mxg -i input.mxg -c:v libx264 -preset medium -crf 23 -c:a aac -b:a 128k output.mp4
Why does this work?
The -f mxg parameter is crucial: it forces FFmpeg to use the correct MXG demuxer. Without this parameter, FFmpeg doesn’t automatically recognize the Mobotix format. The MXG format (MxPEG) uses Motion JPEG with differential frames – standard tools cannot read the video duration and fail during the scan phase.
Parameter explanation:
-
-f mxg– Forces MXG demuxer (most important parameter!) -
-c:v libx264– H.264 video codec -
-preset medium– Balance between speed and file size -
-crf 23– Constant quality (range 18-28, where 23 = very good quality) -
-c:a aac– AAC audio codec -
-b:a 128k– Audio bitrate