"THIS MOVIE FORMAT IS NOT SUPPORTED"

I have the same problem I can't see the movies in the video tab but the are all showing on my ipod classic no problem! If I change the movie to TV show they still don't show in the tv show folder but they do sync with the Iphone. I spent 30 mins on the phone to apple yesterday and the tech guy had no answer left me hanging for 15 mins and then the phone went dead not a good sign!

I took an AVI file (video from my digital camera) imported it into Quicktime Pro, exported it from QT Pro as an MP4 file then imported that file to my video folder in iTunes and synced it to my iPhone and it played just fine on the iPhone 3G.

Then why are you posting to this forum? Seriously, those of us experiencing this are neither making it up nor idiots. I grant that your post did contribute to the record that this is not happening inconsistently. It follows that it's probably based on some obscure difference some where. I think my own posted experiences have demonstrated that something very weird is going on, and others have done similarly. If you haven't gotten a "Movie Format is not supported" error, and you don't have a solution, why are you posting here? We don't especially need to know that it works for some lucky people! :-D

Is someone on this forum who can analyze mp4 files in detail? I can reliably produce two files with Nero Recode from the same source material (a DVD): One will play, the other won't.
The one which doesn't play was created with Nero Recode default settings, the one that works had exactly one setting different: "deinterlace on" was checked.

I have now re-encoded about 100 episodes from a set of 20 DVDs with "deinterlace on", and they all play just fine on Firmware 2.0.

So, if anyone wants the two sample files to dig into, let me know.

I can also provide such files, only for me the encoding difference was H.264. My files are under 100Mb.

I should add that I used iSquint, not Nero.

Markian

Message was edited by: Markian Hlynka

Excuuuuuse meeee I have had the same problem "Movie format not supported" error and what I described in my post is how I worked my way around it. I tried many ways to get several different formats to display on my phone none of them working until I tried what I described in my post. I come to these forums to learn an on the rare occasion where I have found a solution to a problem that I have and that others are experiencing I feel it justifiable to share my experience yet don't feel like being chastised for sharing what worked for me. Others might suggest you go take your meds but I don't think that kind of comment is in the spirit of the forum.

I am very angry at Apple. With 2.0 software they have somehow inhibited the H264 codec. I had no problems before 2.0 viewing my videos encoded with H264 (I have over 60 GB of them) now it is impossible. I have been triyng all sorts of different encoding options, and at last I found the only one working for me: Isquint v.1.5 video optimized for ipod-maximum quality-but I left the H264 unchecked. With those options I can finally see videos on my ipod touch upgraded to 2.0. I hope this will help other users, but nevertheless I am hoping Apple will fix this "bug" and allow H264 to work properly under 2.0 with the next update, because video encoded with H264 are much better quality.

sorry, starfish, I forgot that you had posted before; there's a couple pages of this stuff now. I took your last post out of context and it sounded like a random person saying 'it works for me'.

Apologies for the tone of my last post; I just want my iPod to work properly like it did before 2.0.

Markian

Thanks for the reply, understood.

Excellent. At the very least someone has been able to verify my method as working for them. Can anyone else download iSquint and successfully encode videos that wouldn't work before? I know this is only a work around, and a bad one at that. H.264 should work.

I point out again that it puzzles me that iSquint's H.264 checkbox works for SOME of my videos. Weird.

Markian

I had never used iSquint but after reading your post down loaded it and tried it out using the H.264 codex. It encoded a file for me that transfered and displays just fine on my iPhone 3g. This thread is getting so long I have forgotten if we are talking about phones or iPods.

I did download the latest version of iSquint and there is a note on the down load page that says "What’s New in this Version - Certain types of files converted to plain MPEG-4 no longer show up without video in QuickTime Player 7.4 and higher. - iSquint now includes a program droplet called “Debreaker” to repair damaged “no video” .mp4 files created by earlier versions of iSquint".

Have you tried the new version?

A google search got me here because I too have the Nero Recoded MP4 that won't play on the 2.0 firmware iPod touch. This may have been memtioned earlier in this thread but I lost video playback in my Video iPod after the may software update. All of my Mp4's were created using Nero Recode 2 amd after upgrading to Nero Recode 3 the new ones won't play on the Video iPod or my iPod touch. I felt at first that it was Nero not keeping pace with improvements to their codec and I would have to re-rip my DVD's once I had the new codec for 2.0 firmware. Now I too believe that it has dropped the ball but the conspiricy theorist in me thought that apple doesn't want video other than those purchased on iTunes to be compatible with iPods. But the comments stating that previously purchaced iTune videos now fail to play on 2.0 leads me to think otherwise.

OK... what we know is that many files that people have made before the 2.0 update and worked before now DON'T work. Why that is different, is anyones guess... either the Phone is reading the files differently or its intense solar flairs who knows...

what I do know is that my files that I had made in Visual Hub aren't playing... but more importantly SOME of them do. (I do everything in H264 and I think that catagorically saying H264 is broken is wrong. It is important to know that there are different H264 encoders out there so maybe we are experiencing the fact that some work and some don't

I DID find an interesting post on the Visual Hub forum about frame rates... They claim that if you type "ntsc-film" in the frame rate window of their expert settings tab. that it will work... HOW FREAKIN WIERD... I mean, it doesn't even fit in the field... but I thought, what do I have to loose and I tried it on a short clip alas... it worked... I did one with no frame rate info inserted, which should pass thru the input data and on the other attempt i typed "ntsc-film"... wow... it worked...

what this DOESN'T solve is this... "What about all those past movies that DID work and now do not.

In my opinion, It would be a good thing if apple put things back the way they were...

Historically QT gained market share and support because it was always backward compatible... I know of people that still have QT 1.0 files that play on modern day machines with the current versions of QT. I think this practice of having a file work one day and then NOT another day sort of goes against the Backward Compatibility that has made QT the leading production file handler for Video Work for all these years. but of course... what do I know anyway??

I have been having a similar problem and want to share what I have learned by reading this thread and messing around with some video files. I use Nero recode to recode mpg2 --> mpg4 (h.264) using the standard iPod/iPhone profile supplied by Nero. These files all play flawlessly on my video iPod and did play on the previous version of iPhone software. I purchased iPhone 3G and none of the video files played and I got the same error "THIS MOVIE FORMAT IS NOT SUPPORTED".

It explicitly says on the Apple site that h.264 is supported on iphone 3G, so i figured there was some small glitch that was causing the problem. I was able to do two things to get the old movies to play, and to get new movies encoded in Nero to play without manipulation:

1. With files that were previously encoded I used the "convert to ipod/iphone function in itunes, or imported into QT pro and exported as iphone .m4v, both solutions worked. The itunes solution seems better because you can highlight multiple files and just let it go... i did two full length movies last night and they converted and played with no problem (and they still play on ipod as well).

2. I examined the specs for the supported h.264 on the Apple website and noticed some subtle differences in that and the specs for the nero profile. In particular, nero defaults to 640x476 screen size and 29.97 fps frame rate. Apple states that iphone supports 640x480 and 30 fps. So I made these simple changes to the nero profile and voila... newly encoded video in nero recode played with no problem (also on ipod). I did not need to manually enable de-interlace or motion adaptive as stated above.

My conclusion is that Steve changed something in the codec to make it less lenient, and now the files have to strictly conform to the screen resolution and frame rate or they will not work. I too hope that this is fixed with an update, but for now I think these two solutions can help the Nero people anyway.

Greg...

so if i read your post correctly, your "step 1" basically says, "Re-Encode all your movies using Apples Software, either iTunes or QT) and we all should know by now that iTunes is nothing more then a VERY elaborate QT player.

Also... your comment on specs, needing to be 640X480... I think a better way of saying that is that they can not be LARGER then either of those dimensions... I regularly make movies that are 640 X 360.

I don't know Nero... I assume that is a PC app?

at anyrate... this is a tough mystery to unravel. I just hope I don't have to re-encode a bunch of stuff.

Certainly from hear on out... we'll be doing things differently.