Quicktime Plays Green Screen - MPEG-4

[b4peace]

I just had a guy convert some old VHS vids to MPEG-4 (don't know what kind of computer he used but can find out) - tried playing them in Quicktime and iMovie on my Powerbook G4 OSX 10.4.11 and they all play a blank green screen - but can hear the audio.

My other MP4 vids play fine.

Any help appreciated! Thanks

 

[MacCubed]

I just had a guy convert some old VHS vids to MPEG-4 (don't know what kind of computer he used but can find out) - tried playing them in Quicktime and iMovie on my Powerbook G4 OSX 10.4.11 and they all play a blank green screen - but can hear the audio.

My other MP4 vids play fine.

Any help appreciated! Thanks

Have you tested the videos on another computer? Because it may be the videos

 

[b4peace]

Have you tested the videos on another computer? Because it may be the videos

Have not tested on another computer but will try that, thanks.

 

[b4peace]

FYI - to anyone who's interested: I uploaded one of the MPEG-4 files to Youtube then downloaded using Tube Enhancer (which I love) in MP4 format and now it plays! So, does anyone know if there's a difference btwn the two formats MPEG-4 and MP4 that would cause the green screen problem? Thnx.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Video playback on computers is a very murky world and having an old PPC adds a bit more difficulty due to the hardware.
For playback in Quicktime, install Perian:

http://www.perian.org/

This is a pack of codecs that Quicktime can use to open formats that are not native to it - it's pretty comprehensive and tackles most things.
However, it may come as a surprise but Quicktime, despite being Apple software, is not the best video player for PPC Macs - VLC is much better - more efficent and readily tackles video files Quicktime can't.
For Tiger you'll need version 0.9.10:

http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/0.9.10/macosx/

I've found the best player to be XBMC (version 11 for PPC), however this is a media centre rather than a simple file player but it does appear to have the most powerful player engine.

The difference between MPEG-4 and MP4 in your case will be the codec in the file - essentially how the video file is stored and played back - it's likely the MPEG-4 file was using a codec your Powerbook didn't have hence the green screen.

Bear in mind that video files available online now use codecs that weren't mainstream when the Powerbook was made, so are either unplayable or difficult to play on it - however, if you're patient there are plenty of tools available to convert video into more agreeable formats that fly on PPC.

 

[Gamer9430]

Have you tested the videos on another computer? Because it may be the videos

I agree with this, the guy who converted the tapes may have done something wrong with the footage and that is why they are green. However, if they were to work on a different system, then its probably the old version of quicktime.The plugins Dronecatcher listed should work fine and will allow you to get them to work. Also, try using VLC Media Player. It can run any A/V file in existence and is fully compatible with PPC macs. Frankly, because of how much functionality is missing from QT in it's older versions, most PPC Mac owners install VLC to replace it regardless if they will ever use it.

 

[b4peace]

Video playback on computers is a very murky world and having an old PPC adds a bit more difficulty due to the hardware.
For playback in Quicktime, install Perian:

http://www.perian.org/

This is a pack of codecs that Quicktime can use to open formats that are not native to it - it's pretty comprehensive and tackles most things.
However, it may come as a surprise but Quicktime, despite being Apple software, is not the best video player for PPC Macs - VLC is much better - more efficent and readily tackles video files Quicktime can't.
For Tiger you'll need version 0.9.10:

http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/0.9.10/macosx/

I've found the best player to be XBMC (version 11 for PPC), however this is a media centre rather than a simple file player but it does appear to have the most powerful player engine.

The difference between MPEG-4 and MP4 in your case will be the codec in the file - essentially how the video file is stored and played back - it's likely the MPEG-4 file was using a codec your Powerbook didn't have hence the green screen.

Bear in mind that video files available online now use codecs that weren't mainstream when the Powerbook was made, so are either unplayable or difficult to play on it - however, if you're patient there are plenty of tools available to convert video into more agreeable formats that fly on PPC.

Thanks for the tip - downloaded VLC and now can play the videos - so far, so good Next problem is how to get these MPEG-4 videos to play/edit in iMovie 6, which is what I have installed on my PPC G4 and cannot be updated? I imagine they would need to be re-encoded in a format compatible with iMovie 6 -- any ideas? All help appreciated.

 

[b4peace]

I agree with this, the guy who converted the tapes may have done something wrong with the footage and that is why they are green. However, if they were to work on a different system, then its probably the old version of quicktime. The plugins Dronecatcher listed should work fine and will allow you to get them to work. Also, try using VLC Media Player. It can run any A/V file in existence and is fully compatible with PPC macs. Frankly, because of how much functionality is missing from QT in it's older versions, most PPC Mac owners install VLC to replace it regardless if they will ever use it.

Thanks for the tip - downloaded VLC and now can play the videos - so far, so good Next problem is how to get these MPEG-4 videos to play/edit in iMovie 6, which is what I have installed on my PPC G4 and cannot be updated? I imagine they would need to be re-encoded in a format compatible with iMovie 6 -- any ideas? All help appreciated.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Thanks for the tip - downloaded VLC and now can play the videos - so far, so good Next problem is how to get these MPEG-4 videos to play/edit in iMovie 6, which is what I have installed on my PPC G4 and cannot be updated? I imagine they would need to be re-encoded in a format compatible with iMovie 6 -- any ideas? All help appreciated.

Download MPEG Streamclip 1.9.2:

http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html

Open one of your problem files with it - if it doesn't play, download Perian and try again (installing Perian is a good idea anyway). If it plays then you can export with Streamclip to many options, MPEG or Quicktime will be best. For quickness I'd recommend exporting to MPEG-4 and choosing Apple MPEG4 Compressor - try different bitrates to find the best speed/quality balance.

 

[b4peace]

Download MPEG Streamclip 1.9.2:

http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html

Open one of your problem files with it - if it doesn't play, download Perian and try again (installing Perian is a good idea anyway). If it plays then you can export with Streamclip to many options, MPEG or Quicktime will be best. For quickness I'd recommend exporting to MPEG-4 and choosing Apple MPEG4 Compressor - try different bitrates to find the best speed/quality balance.

Thanks again for the tip. I downloaded MPEG Streamclip but it wouldn't play those pesky MPEG-4 files, they just showed up green. I also downloaded Perian but it didn't make any difference. Do I need to configure Perian to work with Streamclip?

But, as mentioned before, after uploading to and downloading from Youtube (very time consuming but productive) I was able to convert them into DV files using Streamclip, which improved the video quality slightly, and then imported them into iMovie 6.

Now, the guy who converted my VHS tapes has let me know that he can convert future tapes into .mov which I can use directly with iMovie 6!

Very convoluted journey but I think progress is being made!!! I'm just not ready to dump my PPC yet, and will keep using it as long as I am able.

Cheers!

 

[Dronecatcher]

As far as I know, you don't have to configure Perian with other apps.

As VLC plays the files, you could try converting them with it (go to File/Streaming/Exporting Wizard) - although I've never had any success doing that - at best it made files that only VLC itself could play.

You could also try Handbrake 0.9.4 - that's a popular and useful converter:

https://handbrake.fr/old.php

I only encountered the green screen problems when making DVDs - they would play OK on the authoring computer but go green (with audio) on other machines.

It does require a bit of legwork but once you fathom all the variables for video work, you'll find PPCs are still useful.

 

[RachelZ3]

Green Screen MP4, no video OS X Quicktime
(had to add those words hoping it will help someone else.)

I just had to thank you, thank you, thank you. You not only solved the problem and educated us, but also you did it in such a non-judgmental way. My 7 year old got into an online honors program and although the demo video worked, after I paid $800 for the course, the lesson videos were green screen, no audio. He's using my iBook G4, and the latest versions of Quicktime (7 something) and iTunes and Firefox wouldn't play these stinkin videos. Aside from how angry I am about the planned obsolescence everyone accepts and defends (go get a new computer, its too difficult for these companies to make their products backwards compatible... upgrade your OS, iOS, browser, its free... as long as you don't mind losing your privacy... but I digress). As I pondered buying him a new computer, aside from how wrong that is, there is no guarantee the videos will work on the latest and greatest system and how stupid would I feel after shelling out to have the same or new problems getting things to work for my kid. You also pointed us to some wonderful sw run by some great people.
OK so the first thing I did was try the same mp4 on my MacBook Air running OS 10.6.5, Quicktime 10.0, and confirmed that there is actually video, yes, there is. A lot of searching the web, a lot of discussions of codecs and graphics cards. No joy.

But some combination of those keywords got me to this post, bless your soul 1000 times.

I had to dl perian some time ago for another purpose and I was happy to see it again. Nice of those folks to keep it available even though they've moved on. It did not help.

Videolan rocked. Your link was much better than what I tried on the Videolan site, thank you for pointing out version 0.9.10 for us Tiger users (iBooks can't run anything later than Tiger). For other Tiger users, the one that worked was without an extension, those may work but this is the one that worked for me and I didn't bother trying the others.

So, thanks to you, my son is completing his very expensive homework assignment.

I cannot thank you enough.

Video playback on computers is a very murky world and having an old PPC adds a bit more difficulty due to the hardware.
For playback in Quicktime, install Perian:

http://www.perian.org/

This is a pack of codecs that Quicktime can use to open formats that are not native to it - it's pretty comprehensive and tackles most things.
However, it may come as a surprise but Quicktime, despite being Apple software, is not the best video player for PPC Macs - VLC is much better - more efficent and readily tackles video files Quicktime can't.
For Tiger you'll need version 0.9.10:

http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/0.9.10/macosx/

I've found the best player to be XBMC (version 11 for PPC), however this is a media centre rather than a simple file player but it does appear to have the most powerful player engine.

The difference between MPEG-4 and MP4 in your case will be the codec in the file - essentially how the video file is stored and played back - it's likely the MPEG-4 file was using a codec your Powerbook didn't have hence the green screen.

Bear in mind that video files available online now use codecs that weren't mainstream when the Powerbook was made, so are either unplayable or difficult to play on it - however, if you're patient there are plenty of tools available to convert video into more agreeable formats that fly on PPC.

 

[Dronecatcher]

So, thanks to you, my son is completing his very expensive homework assignment.

That's made my day Glad the info helped.
I completely agree, there's no need to rush into buying new hardware and ditching yesteryear's premium computers - there's still plenty of workarounds to get the best from them.
Hope all goes well!