Has anyone had success using Kodak or any other digital picture frames as a movie viewer?
An interesting question. And, since my daughter-in-law is coming up on her birthday, I figured I would buy her one and answer the question for myself. Unfortunately, now that my wife has seen the unit (an SV-811), she now wants one too. In any event, the answer is "YES, it is possible to convert your own files!"
So far, when I export movies from iMovie onto an SD card and into the Frame, the Frame says 'format not supported.'
This seems to be the general error message whenever a video file cannot be played. You will get this message whether the dimensions of your encoded file are too large (i.e., greater than 640x480) or the audio/video compression formats are not compatible with the device.
Kodak's advice is to use a Kodak camera, of course.
Taking this for granted, I visited the Kodak support area. There I noted their comments that only digital camera files were "certified" compatible with the device. Assuming the Kodak digital picture frames would be compatible with their own digital camera models, I searched the internet for a Kodak sample file and loaded it to the SV-811 where I found it played correctly.
Examining the working file I attempted to create a files of my own using similar settings only to find that the digital picture frame did not like files using inter-frame encoding. (I.e., they seemed to play to some extent at the top of the display but never managed to complete the sub-matrix block decoding at the bottom. Further, this ability to decode was inversely proportional to video data rate.
Next I looked at the file headers themselves and discovered they were "filefmt: 7" with a "fourcc: 0x7634706d" or "mp4v" which eventually lead me to Lead's MCMP/JPEG codec. Based on this information, the "playability problems" associated with my earlier MPEG4/µ-Law tests, as well as, the likelihood that the same hardware/firmware would create both the JPEG image and motion frames, I decided to change tactics and run additional tests using other video compression formats.
CONCLUSION: It would appear that the Kodak MPEG-4 files are MPEG-4 in name only. That is to say, all of the frames are compressed as JPEG intraframes making the video content effectively a Motion-JPEG movie -- more specifically a single filed Motion JPEG A video file. I also learned that while the original Kodak audio was encoded as 8-bit, 16.0 KHz @ 128 Kbps, and that QT only exports µ-Law 2:1 audio as 16-bit, 16.Khz @ 128 Kbps, the Kodak SV-811 would accept/play the latter which is more convenient than using other PCM formats which QT can create using an 8-bit format.
NOTES: As the original sample file was encoded with a target video data rate on the order of 4100-4200 Kbps and QT M-JPEG A encoding does not allow the user to set a target video data rate, I used the "quality" slider for this purpose testing files with video data rate of about 4400, 5500, and 7600 Kbps. All played well with quality increasing in direct proportion with the data rate.
COMMENTS: While it is possible to export compatible Kodak digital picture frame files in at least one compression format thus far, I doubt many will wish to do so on a regular basis or to any great degree since data rates in the range tested produce files ranging from 33-57 MB/min. In addition, owing to the video resolution restrictions, the quality of such video is inferior to that of the larger resolution photos that can be used and which take up less space.
