Video Issues (iMovie/Quicktime)

[tdbrown75]

I have a BTO Late 2015 iMac Retina 5K with the following specs:
3.3 GHz Intel Core i5
24 GB 1867 MHz DDR3
AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4096 MB
512GB SSD

Running:
OS X El Capitan 10.11.2
iMovie 10.1

I have had the machine for about two months and have had zero issues, until today. It's the first time I pulled up iMovie to do some video editing. Both newly imported video as well as old footage in my libraries appear pixelated on the right side. Same thing happens when I try and play the AVCHD files in Quicktime.

The very same files on a 2011 Mac Mini, with the same versions of OSx and iMovie, work just fine. So I believe the issue is isolated to my iMac.

I have the issue showing up on multiple files, from multiple Sony cameras and my iPhone. Although the iPhone video only appears pixelated in the preview screen. AVCHD files appear pixelated in both the preview and the main window. SD movies (both old and new) seem fine.

I removed my added memory, ran hardware diagnostics (no issues), formatted and reinstalled OSx (same issue) and have been trolling the net for similar problems, but can't find anything like it.

I finally broke down and called Apple support, and spoke to 3 different people before submitting detailed diagnostics and screenshots to engineering. I was just curious if anyone else has had any similar issues?

Tim

 

[tdbrown75]

Coming back with an update, hopefully someone else might benefit from this post in the future.

After engineering reviewed the detailed diagnostics and screenshots, they determined the problem was a hardware problem related to the video card. I took the machine into Apple for a logic board replacement (video card / memory are integrated).

I picked the machine up Saturday, and the issue is in fact resolved. No more pixelation!

Tim

 

[Dave Braine]

Thanks for letting us know. As you say it could prove useful to someone in the future.

 

[-hh]

I'm going to hijack your thread ... which will help keep your hardware glitch thing get visibility.

I've run into a CODEC problem with my Mac-based output videos. I'm pretty sure that it is Quicktime related.

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Long story short, I'm hosting some OS X - produced videos .. stuff that I've typically piped through iMovie to do some simple editing & get the file size down to something manageable enough for a webpage.

All of the resulting webpages w/videos used to work just fine, on OS X (naturally) as well as mobile phones and a Windows PC at work which had Quicktime installed.

But today, they only continue to work on OS X.

Windows isn't working because of a change in IT policy where we're no longer authorized to have Quicktime installed.

iOS (version 9.x) isn't working ... no particular idea why.

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I suspect that the underlying problem is probably the Quicktime format/CODEC, especially for the Windows PC. So my question is a two-parter:

1) just which specific video file format *should* I be choosing to use?

2) ... and how does one get that format as the exported output out of OS X products such as iMovie?


Thanks,

-hh