mp4's with no video, only sound, temp fix

Question

Level 1

0 points

mp4's with no video, only sound, temp fix

I am experiencing a lot of mp4's that used to work in quicktime that no longer do since the recent update. These were videos converted in iSquint. If you change the file extension from mp4 to 3gp, they will work. I have yet to test them in Apple TV (was experiencing the same problems there), but seeing how Apple TV runs through quicktime, I think that it will fix there too, assuming Apple TV can play 3gp files.

http://www.power4mac.com/renamer/
This is a freeware program for easy renaming of large numbers of files.

MDD DP1.0G4, iBook G4 1.33, 80 GB 5g iPod, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Feb 28, 2008 12:39 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Ryan K.

Level 2

287 points

Feb 28, 2008 1:37 PM in response to misterbilzi

Good find misterbilzi, this is more proof QuickTime is messed up and Apple needs to fix it.

Thanks misterbilzi

Reply

Answer 2

misterbilzi Author

Level 1

0 points

Feb 28, 2008 6:42 PM in response to misterbilzi

well.. not so much apple screwed up..
More it was iSquint, or other conversion programs that did not convert it into the exact codec that quicktime was using. It has to do with the whole H.263 vs H.264 codec I believe.
Regardless, the best way I can explain it is that there is a sub-codec of mp4's. The 3gp is a form of mp4 that is a different compression method.
iSquint, etc, were encoding in the format that is now preferably known as 3gp. It isn't so much that quicktime can't read them anymore, but that they actually think that they're something that they're not if they're 'improperly' labelled as mp4's when they should be 3gp's.

This is just my understanding, I could be way off, but it makes sense to me.

Reply

Answer 3

Mar 2, 2008 6:26 AM in response to misterbilzi

well.. not so much apple screwed up..
More it was iSquint, or other conversion programs that did not convert it into the exact codec that quicktime was using. It has to do with the whole H.263 vs H.264 codec I believe.<</div>

I would buy that except that these are H.264 files that played just fine via Quacktime UNTIL I upgraded to 7.4.1. So the codec was clearly peachy in previous flavors of QT...which doesn't sound to me like it was a conversion problem, but a problem with Apple's software. Don't see how it can be otherwise.

Reply

Answer 4

geofcox

Level 1

0 points

Mar 2, 2008 9:12 AM in response to misterbilzi

Thanks for the tip misterbilzi. I have now resurected my mp4 movies. Does anyone from Apple monitor or read these posts? Sounds like you have got a lot of unsatisfied customers out here looking for you to do a fix on 7.4.1 - when might we expect you to do something?

Reply

Answer 5

Kyn Drake

Level 7

21,591 points

Mar 2, 2008 6:56 PM in response to Gregory Frost

It's not the codec. The video track of problem files have been created incorrectly. Thus they were non-standard .mp4 files. (Some of the developers have since updated their code so that newly created files have valid track size values.) QuickTime no longer plays these non-standard files.

Reply

Answer 6

Mar 4, 2008 6:57 AM in response to misterbilzi

I fixed this issue on a MacBook by swapping out the mp4 component for an earlier version.

You can find it in /System/Library/Quicktime/
I advise backing up the original (later version 7.4.1), this is just good practice.

For those of you who don't have an older version kicking about on another Mac, download it here:

http://homepage.mac.com/waragainstsleep/FileSharing6.html

Reply

Answer 7

Mar 5, 2008 9:10 AM in response to Daniel McCarthy

I just discovered the playback problem today when I was collecting mp4 files to add to my web site. I panicked when I found that they would not play. I had made them with iSquint. Luckily I still have an emac running Panther and I was happy to see that they still played fine on 7.1.5 (just another one of a number of good reasons I keep that computer around!) As an experiment I copied one file, changed the extension to .3gp, and the file now plays fine on quicktime 7.4.1 I found that quicktime 7.1.5 will also play .3gp files. Back on the computer with 7.4.1 I opened a .3gp file into quicktime pro and exported it as a .mov file The .mov file plays just fine, so I guess that's another fix. But now my dilemma is what file type to add to my web site. Should I change my mp4 labeled files to .3gp, and add these to my web site? Or should I convert them to .mov files? Considering all platforms and browsers, which format would be most likely to be playable for viewers?

thanks for any ideas you might have.

Reply

Answer 8

Kyn Drake

Level 7

21,591 points

Mar 6, 2008 11:59 AM in response to misterbilzi

The developer of iSquint has released an updated iSquint that now creates valid .mp4 files from .flv's and has also released a Debreaker that will fix .mp4's that were created improperly.

http://www.isquint.org/getit.php

Reply

Answer 9

Mar 6, 2008 12:43 PM in response to Ryan Thomson

.mov is really a wrapper format, not a codec and its usually the codec which determines who and what can play it.
.mp4 is both a wrapper and a codec (you may notice some mp4s are .h264 which is solely a codec).
It sounds like .3gp is a wrapper too but I confess I don't happen to know for sure.

If you have Perian or the various divx, 3ivx, xvid, wmv and flv codecs installed then any of these edited with QT Pro will be saved as a .mov.

As for what to use for your site, .flv and wmv will play on pretty much anything though I believe ou have to pay for software to convert to wmv on a Mac.

I still believe mp4 and .h264 are the best codecs to use. I personally don't think flash matches them for quality and wmv tends to be less stable as well though its quality has gotten better.

The drawback with .h264 is you need more powerful hardware to play it back, and it therefore takes much longer to encode.

Reply

Answer 10

Mar 11, 2008 11:49 AM in response to Kyn Drake

Its the mp4 codec. See this thread for a fix:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6468503&#6468503

Reply