mov to avi and back: a nightmare. HELP!!!

[caspar carlo]

Hello everyone,

new to this forum....in this category I found the most useful hints on mac to pc horror stories.

I am a video editor working with different codecs for 10+ years but what puzzles me is that the divided industry invents new obstacles to make cross-platform video viewing so unbearably difficult.
Here's my general problem.

I have a QT file, in both h.264 and .mpg4 plays perfect on every mac, to bypass trouble I uploaded it to vimeo. .still Windows people cannot play it back.

Learned (from a friendly person in this forum) of fivesquared's mpg Streamclip, in which I converted my h.264 mov file into a Dvix .avi file.

I understand that will play on every PC (given that - most likely- Dvix codec is installed) But now I fear Mac users without Pernian aid and/or Dvix installed will be the one that will have trouble viewing my video.

So: WHAT'S THE MOST UNIVERSAL CODEC THAT WILL PLAY ON BOTH PLATFORMS??!?

Any help GREEEAAATTTLLY appreciated.

Thanks!

Caspar Carlo

 

[spinnerlys]

There is not really a universal codec.

Either Windows users install QuickTime Player to view H264 encoded video, or Mac OS X users use Perian or the VLC Player to view Divx/Xvid encoded .avi files.

Although, as you mentioned, the Divx codec has either to be installed on the Windows platform, or VLC Player is used there too.

 

[caspar carlo]

Re: mov to avi and back: a nightmare. HELP!!!

Thank you spinnerly's.

In the meantime my Divix encoded .avi (done with mpeg streamclip) played on a friend's PC as some colorful abstract mess, that had nothing to do with my video

What would you use if you post a QT on the web and want as much as possible people from both platforms to see it?

I was shockec that ths problem even carries on with vimeo. Somehow YouTube pulled that problem off, and recently which nowadays seems even for *makers* of videos acceptable with the HD option....unfotunately I cannot use YouTube because I need the video to be embedded controller-less ...

 

[Makosuke]

YouTube's workaround for this is to use Flash for video. However, that's the same thing Vimeo (and 99% of other video sharing sites) do, so I have no idea why Vimeo wouldn't be working for you--there should be ZERO difference between a Vimeo embedded player and YouTube.

And of course, Flash is NOT universal; while nearly every desktop and notebook computer has it installed, the iPhone and its relatives have no Flash support. YouTube has a special h.264 version specifically for these platforms (and the new HTML5 version of the site).

So the short answer is, there is no universal codec, period. Flash with a fallback to an h.264 MP4 or MOV is about as close as you're going to get.

If you don't want to buy a copy of Flash, I'd just do an MP4, offer a link to the software necessary to play it for those who don't already have it installed, and call it good.

That'll work for 100% of Mac users, and most Windows users have something installed that will play it--be it a codec pack for Media Player or Quicktime (which many people have on account of it being bundled with iTunes).

 

[caspar carlo]

Thanks Makosuke, really appreciate it!

whhen it comes down to video codecs, it's cruel world out there....



©©

 

[Makosuke]

whhen it comes down to video codecs, it's cruel world out there...

And the irony is, it's currently an incredible improvement over the recent past; only a few years ago there were dozens of codecs in widespread use with spotty support regardless of platform.

Incidentally, another advantage of using an h.264 MP4 (versus older video codecs the format supports) is that it should work well on an iPhone (and I think other mobile devices as well).

 

[totoum]

Incidentally, another advantage of using an h.264 MP4 (versus older video codecs the format supports) is that it should work well on an iPhone (and I think other mobile devices as well).

Not quite all devices,a video that works on an iphone isn't sure to work on an ipod and a video that works on the apple TV might not work on the iphone or ipod.

That's because H.264 has lots of features that not everything supports

Here's a detailed list (done for people using x264),it's ok if you don't know what everything means,but you can get that it's a bit of a mess:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tYGTjNd0dG6P_A9z-YkFzFg&output=html