FCP 4.5 convert to Quicktime Problem Playing
 

We compressed a 5 min. film into a Quicktime video. The video is only playing the audio and showing no video. Each time we get an error that reads: quicktime is missing software required to display this movie file. Unfortunately it is not available on the quicktime server.

Is this a formatting problem? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

it's an outside shot, but did you create the qt file on a mac, with the new h.264 video codec, and it won't play back on a pc.

Yes, that is what I did.

Quicktime 7 isn't available yet for the PC, so I suspect that's your problem...

hmm, good guess on my part, huh? only because i've seen it before, lol.

until there is a free pc media player that is h.264 capable, that codec is a waste of time for internet use... you can thank apple for this debacle, they should have released their h.264 codec for the pc version of the qt player instead... what good is a mac-only codec that only works on 2.8% of the computers on the 'net?

one thing that you might want to do, chris, is get the nero h.264 encoding suite for the pc, it's pretty cheap($69??), and it comes with a player that'll work perfectly with the h.264 codec... run some serious comparison tests on both h.264 codecs, i'd do it myself, but i don't have a mac.

that way, you'll be all set when the h.264 pc media players hit the 'net.

Thanks a ton. You gotta love that the h.264 codec is set as the default! Is there another codec that you would recommend using instead?

MSFT holds the records for not shipping cross platform support for their WMV 7 and 9 formats. It was measured in years. I doubt Apple will come close to those records.

Choosing your output format depends on how you want to distribute it: Web, CD, DVD... QuickTime 7 adds MPEG4 part 10 (aka H.264) support to the MPEG4 part 2 that's been there for a few years in addition to the plethora of other CODECs. Until QT for Windows 7 comes out, MPEG-4 part 2 will play on both platforms just fine. There are hosts of other options too.

File -> Export ->QuickTime Movie will export your clip in DV format that will play just fine on a PC. If the PC has enough umpf (all don't) you can use ctrl-J to turn on all 3 quality settings on the video track.

File -> Export -> Using QuickTime Conversion lets you choose from a host of other compression options. You can use the LAN preset and change the CODEC to Sorenson using the Options button. Many stock footage places distribute footage in this manner but use the MJPEG CODEC and a frame size of 721x480.

File -> Export -> Using Compressor gives you a whole host of presets and options. I like to use a customized version of the MPEG-4 Improved NTSC for CD preset with the compression changed to Variable Bit Rate. If you want to emphasize, image quality more, you can also boost the video datarate. I don't have QT-7 so I don't know what H.264 presets are there but you'll want to steer clear those using the MPEG-4 part 10 (H.264) CODEC.

funny how apple is trying to force their mac-only h.264 codec onto the internet, but they aren't smart enuf to see that it won't play back on any of the computers out there.

apple mpeg4 is not recommended for professional use, because the quality is so horrible... we have already covered that issue, you can see for yourself with the test clips i posted earlier... the links are in that long thread that marcia started, wherein she was complaining about the lousy quicktime pq.

chris, you have a 5 minute clip, and you want to put it on the 'net? the only way that you'll get decent video quality with the quicktime format is by using the expensive sorenson pro 3 codec and it's two-pass encoder... but even that isn't as good as the free microsoft windows media 9 codec... do you have a pc that you can encode video on?

wrt h.264 on the pc, i have been able to play nero h.264, sorenson h.264, and hi-def fast/vdo h.264, but i can't get the apple hi-def h.264 trailers to play back on the nero player... yet it works for everything else that i throw at it.