System wide Quicktime problem

J

jscordia

Registered
Hello! I have a G5, 1.8MHz running 10.4.9 and latest Quicktime.

I have an Apple TV and so have been getting into Handbrake, Visual Hub etc in an (pre UK Moviestore) effort to get my DVDs and .avi's and other movie files into a correct MP4 format. There are also a number of sources such as Mobovivo, the Democracy Player etc that allow me to download legit content that is apparently already in an Mpeg 4 format.

I have a regular, random problem.

No matter what setting I use on Handbrake to rip a DVD or on Visual Hub (which does accept the files and renders them to H.264) I often find files that will not play in Quicktime, giving me a similar murky grey/green megapixelated screen in every case.

Those files, or the originals I tried to convert will always play properly in VLC, and for that matter in the democracy player. Surely these are built on Quicktime?

I've added the Perian, Divx and xVid plugins to my Quicktime.

The same thing happens on my 17" Powerbook using 10.4.8.

Any ideas?

Thank you for your help.

Regards

Jon
 
MPEG4 and H.264 video are not really Apple's. QuickTime paved the way with them, but the truth is, Apple's decoders are not up to the latest standards. If a movie uses advanced encoding options like B-frames, it will not play in QuickTime Player without separate components that override Apple's outdated decoders. mp4vDecoder and avc1Decoder are two such components, but that won't help you on your AppleTV (unless you hack the AppleTV to accept other QuickTime components, which is possible, but not easy).

VLC and Democracy are NOT built on QuickTime. They are built on open-source, cross-platform video libraries such as ffmpeg.
 
Thanks for your quick response Mukiro! I've installed both the decoders you suggest, restarted Quicktime (not the machine yet, I have an overnight Handbrake running) and no change. The file is still just as blocky. I've gone back to some of my early Handbrake test outputs (Mpeg 4) and tried them. No improvement. But as a double check, they DO ALL play perfectly on VLC.

My ultimate aim here as you know is to convert these files so that AppleTV can play them. I hear what you're saying about hacking the machine (too scared!) but I hoped that Visual Hub would be able to read then convert these files given that (I now realise) it's based on ffmpeg. It's run them through the encoding process but the encoded files are just as unreadable.

Still stumped!

Cheers

Jon
 
Hmm. Then maybe the source of the problem is the presence of a bad component rather than the absence of a good one. Open the "QuickTime" folders in your two Library folders (the one in your user folder and the one in the root directory of your startup volume) and try removing all the items. Then reload QuickTime Player (rebooting should not be necessary) and see if that fixes the problem.

I can tell you from experience that Handbrake is capable of making QuickTime-compatible mp4 files. Actually, I just took another quick look at Handbrake, and I don't even see options for the advanced, non-QT-compatible features I mentioned before. I think it was really built for QT compatibility.
 
Good plan. Thanks. I'll try that over the weekend. Perian in particular suggests a list of other plugs it makes redundant.

Here's another thought fed to me by someone else. I'm an honest lad who believes it's ok to take his own music DVDs and rip the individual music video tracks to add to iTunes for AppleTV use (just like we do with CDs and MP3's right?) DVD DRM hadn't occurered to me. Maybe it's the macrovision that's causing my problem. I didnt stop to think whether Handbrake could or couldn't deal with DRM. I believe that VLC and Democracy act like DVD players and decyrypt and DRM to play. I downloaded some MP4 files via Democracy that are probably DRM'd in a similar way.

Cant wait for the UK Movie store to open as I'm wasting far too much time trying to feed this AppleTV!

Jon
 
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