Need advice/help on Quicktime Pro

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Level 1

35 points

Need advice/help on Quicktime Pro

Hi. I'm trying to help a friend with a video project and I'm having a bunch of trouble. I've been using a variety of software, but I'm hoping that Quicktime Pro (Quicktime 7) can do what I want.

Here's the situation:

My friend has a five minute audio file that he wants to upload to YouTube. He also wants a still image to appear while the audio plays.

I created the image for him in Photoshop Elements - it was a doctored photo of two people. When I added the photo (a PNG) into Imovie 11, the image quality of the photo looked worse. The photo looked "softer" (it was less sharp) and the contrast was lower. However, I uploaded it to YouTube anyway, as a test. The finished video on YouTube looked even worse -- the colors were all orangey.

However, the orangey issue was less important than the softness issue. So, I decided to see if Quicktime Pro could do what I want. I own it, but I've barely used it. So, I opened the photo in Quicktime Pro and it looked just fine -- exactly as it had in Photoshop Elements. I then recorded myself using my Mac's microphone just to create an audio file to add the to the still image. I opened that audio file in Quicktime Pro, then copied and pasted the audio into the movie containing the still image. I then saved the movie.

I am running Lion, and I opened the movie in Quicktime Player (not Quicktime Pro) and it also played just fine. The photo looked right and it played the audio as well. So, I decided to then "Share" the movie to YouTube from within Quicktime Player. It didn't work -- I got an error saying "Operation Stopped The operation is not supported for this media." I got the same error when I trying to export the movie within Quicktime Player. Also, IMovie would not successfully import it.

I tried using Handbrake as well to export it into a different format, and that gave me an error too.

So, I'm not sure what is going wrong. Again, the movie plays just fine in Quicktime Pro and Quicktime Player -- the still image displays properly throughout the entire audio -- but I can't seem to export it or share it.

Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks.

Mirsky

Posted on Nov 10, 2011 12:51 AM

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Answer 1

Jon Walker

Level 6

19,467 points

Nov 10, 2011 4:06 AM in response to Mirsky

Any advice is appreciated.

The description of your work flow is different from that which I would use. However, be that as it may, the key problem appears to be the default 15 fps frame rate automatically used to merge the photo and audio data. If you export the merged data directly from QT 7 Pro to any option which allows you to change the frame rate, the file which is then produced does not trigger the export stoppage in other applications. I successfully tested exports at 24 and 30 fps in both the QT X and HandBrake apps without problem.

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