h264 AUDIO movie has no sound in Quicktime.

Question

h264 AUDIO movie has no sound in Quicktime.

Hi.
I have a movie file which was playing the video, but no audio in Quicktime 7.6.2. I opened up the movie properties and saw under the name column a heading "English 5.1" Under the format it is listed simply as "sound". In the movie inspector it only lists the video format (h.264 704x480 millions) and no audio format... which is obviously why Quicktime is not playing the sound. However I opend the movie with VLC and Divx players and they played the movie with the audio with no problems. Mplayer also played it with the sound. I have ffmpgx so I used it to check the source format for it and it listed it is as a matroska (.mkv) container (which I knew), the video as h264 yuv420p 704x 480, but the audio was isted as "h264, 24000 Hz,5:1" I've never seen a h264 audio format before! Is there a codec I am missing to play it? I already have the most recent version of Perian (1.1.3) installed. Am I missing a codec? Can quicktime not play this format? Any input or ideas in general? I could use ffmpegx to export it to another audio format, but I'm just wondering why the original audio format does not play in Quicktime.

Thanks in advance!

Macbook Pro 2.4 Intel duo core 2, Mac OS X (10.4.11), 4 GB RAM

Posted on Jul 24, 2009 1:24 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 25, 2009 6:54 AM in response to Curtis Bilewitch

QuickTime Pro can handle any kind of H.264 video, and you must understand that H.264 represent the video part ONLY, the audio is another story. If your movie has H.264 but encoding sound with Dolby or anything other than AAC, MP3? then, you will hear NO sound, it's no surprise.

Get VLC 1.0 to play all your videos I'd suggest.

Don't install Flip4Mac or Perian, because it will destroy QuickTime's native codec.
QuickTime Pro is supposed to create movies from whatsis to H.264 .mov with AAC sound(better than MP3) and lots more task.

Message was edited by: Mauricette

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Answer 2

Jul 27, 2009 12:22 PM in response to Mauricette

Well ffmpegx lists the audio codec as h264! That's what's confusing! I think it has been encoded with Dolby 5.1. If that's the case I take it Quicktime can't read it?

I already have VLC 0.9 and it plays it fine, but for a movie to play in Front Row and Itunes it also has to play in Quicktime, hence the dillema.

I aleady installed both Flip4Mac and Perian, and I don't regret it because Quicktime plays a lot more movies with them installed than it did before. But it still won't play this movie with the mysterious "h264" audio codec.

Thanks for the help though.

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Answer 3

Jul 27, 2009 5:11 PM in response to varjak paw

Under Media Information on VLC It lists it as:

Type: Audio
Codec: mp4a
Language: English
Channels:3F2R/LFE
Sample Rate: 48000 Hz
AAC extension: SBR

If it is an MP4 then Quicktime SHOULD play it. I notice though it is 5.1 encoded as the channels are all listed. I don't know what an aac extension or sbr mean though.

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Answer 4

varjak paw

Level 10

182,662 points

Jul 28, 2009 7:10 AM in response to Curtis Bilewitch

AAC-SBR is also known as HE-AAC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-EfficiencyAdvanced_AudioCoding

QuickTime does not, to the best of my knowledge, natively support HE-AAC, or a least only supports it in a MOV or MP4 container (I've read contradictory information on HE-AAC support). I haven't found a QuickTime codec plugin that would allow QuickTime to play an mkv file with HE-AAC audio, so unless someone else here has further information, you'll probably have to convert that file to a different format to get it playing in QuickTime.

Regards.

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Answer 5

Jul 28, 2009 8:24 PM in response to varjak paw

What I'll do is convert it in ffmpegx to a .mp4 or .mov container without changing the audio or video format and see if that works for Quicktime. Thanks for the info on HE-AAC. I'll post my results when I'm done.

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Answer 6

Jul 28, 2009 8:33 PM in response to Curtis Bilewitch

You can simply change the extension from .mp4 to .mov, this will change the container. But, this doesn't mean the video in the .mp4 will work in a .mov container. (Been there done that and the .mp4 video didn't work in a .mov container.)

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Answer 7

Jul 29, 2009 6:23 AM in response to David M Brewer

I used vlc to change the container to a .mp4 container, but kept the video and audio formats the same. It messed up the video (made the screen very small) but allowed the AUDIO to be played, so it's the .mkv format that I think is messing it up.

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Answer 8

varjak paw

Level 10

182,662 points

Jul 27, 2009 1:39 PM in response to Curtis Bilewitch

ffmpeg is reporting incorrectly; h.264 is indeed a video codec. What does VLC Media Player say the audio format is?

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