Cannot Create Cinepak Movies

Yes, Cinepak is worse than "ugh." Can't wait to get away from it.

In which format? I've looked at them all, especially AVI and MOV. Can't find it.

AVI has DV-PAL, DV/DVCPRO-NTSC, DVCPRO-PAL, DVCPRO50-NTSC, DVCPRO50-PAL, and None.

MOV has Animation, Apple Intermediate Codec, Applet Pixlet Video, DV-PAL, DV/DVCPRO-NTSC, DVCPRO-PAL, DVCPRO50-NTSC, DVCPRO50-PAL, H.264, JPEG 2000, MPEG-4 Video, None, Photo-JPEG, PNG, and Xiph Theora. I installed the last one independently. It works.

No Cinepak. Something I've done??

It says: Version 7.6.6 (1709) and QuickTime™ Version 7.6.6 (1742).

I've had strange things happen before with QuickTime updates such as making Cinepak no longer available with MOV but having it show up in AVI. Now, it's nowhere. Another identical Mac had it disappear before it went away from mine. According to what I read, it's still on the machine somewhere, just not accessible from my current configuration.

Perhaps, there's some sort of table of formats and codecs that's maintained behind my back (or screen) that, if found, could make ancient, obsolete, and ugly codecs available once more.

Well, my QT 7 does have a Preferences pane with just General, Full Screen, and Recording tabs. No Advanced tab. Woe is me!

I have been through several upgrades and so must have the file associated with the pane somewhere. It's either in my own area or in the system area. Might it be in the QT property list file? Or, is it the "QuickTime Preferences" data file? That one is binary and may be difficult to tweak.

Does someone have a preferences file tweaker?

There actually is a way. It's bizarre and not stable, but it works for now.

When exporting, I select AVI. Then, I choose Use: Default Settings. In previous versions, the default for AVI was (drum roll....) Cinepak. It comes back from the dead. This zombie may not survive though.

So, Apple -- please allow we ordinary mortals to choose what to do. You really don't know the reasons that we often must choose options that you may hate. Please leave us some space.

I have found a temporary work-around. Give me back my computer!!!!!!!

Until you actually use it, you cannot imagine how badly it destroys good videos.

Unfortunately, we have a ton of code tied up in JMF, which only does Cinepak. I'm working on a scheme to use Theora, which is not so old (also not so new). It's plenty good for 3-second 400x300 videos though. The compression is excellent, and the quality is good enough for the resolution we must have.

I wish I had another answer, but our users must not be saddled with installation issues. We must use an all-Java solution.

We're providing real science experiments online with interactive data collection.

Thanks for your help. It helped to point me to the ultimate solution.