Whatever. All I know is I just installed K-Lite Standard on a minutes-old installation of Windows (separate partition), and every MP4 file posted in this thread played in both Media Player Classic and Windows Media Player.
I would take a screenshot of it, but I'm sure you know what happens when you take a screenshot of a DirectShow window. I can't explain what's wrong with your computers, and I'm getting tired of talking about it, and I'm sure you're getting tired of hearing it.
So. Right. Thanks for glossing over my posts. I can play .H26 fine in MPC but not your MP4s. There's no file extension conflict or any crap like that, and I can play other MP4s like Nach's fine.
I glossed over your posts because you weren't providing me with any information other than DOESN'T WORK. Gee, that helps a lot.
Nach's MP4 is just another AVI file with the extension changed. You can open Gspot to get all the stats on it.
Anyway, we've already been over the flaw in MPC that comes down to really obscure circumstances of it having three redundant decoders and it choosing the one that isn't there.
MPC is the SOLE exception to the rule, and it's likely temporary. (In fact it may have been fixed already, since I tried running my MP4 through MPC with every possible decoder combination.) Try opening it in anything else but MPC and it will work.
WMP: video and audio works after forcing open
Winamp: audio only
QuickTime: error when opening file (but QuickTime won't open my other H264 files either)
>If it doesn't work, you're doing something wrong.
Right. Because obviously you can't be wrong. I have to be doing something wrong while choosing File->Open and clicking on the file. :/
So Windows Media Player plays the file flawlessly, then. Your file format defaults are irrelevant. You have to "force" it to open in WMP because you told the MP4 extension to open in another program by default.
And you're not running QuickTime 7 (out since April 2005). QuickTime 6 doesn't have H.264 support, of course it wouldn't work.
Since Winamp piggybacks on QuickTime libraries, it won't play in that either.
So in other words, yes, you are doing something wrong:
Mister Boat wrote:
Try opening in all of these:
- QuickTime 7 (QT7 added H.264 support)
- VLC (don't know how recently they added H.264 support)
- Windows Media Player with ffdshow or DefilerPak
That being said, many free software programmers are happy to take suggestions... as long as they're being made in a nice, polite and civilised way. You may want to try that.
Oh stop. Just because I'm assertive doesn't mean I'm being impolite or uncivilized.
And anyway, I've left posts on SourceForge, though I don't think much will come of them, just because the project really hasn't been active for 3 years, and none of the other requests seem to be going anywhere. There's only one person who can save VirtualDubMod now:
http://s3plan.com/jesus.mp4
Virtual Dub as it allows pretty everything you can do with a movie-file (cut, append, mix, encode etc.) and it doesn't support mp4 at all which is a big minus in my book.
Yeah, that's the big one. If someone could add MP4 output to VirtualDubMod (and not just a half-ass AVI file extension change, either), that would make things a lot easier for people.
I've actually looked into existing GPL programs that could be used in VDubMod with a simple function call / minimal programming effort. There's stuff like "mp4box" that will mux an audio stream and a video stream into a proper MP4 file, but it requires that the audio stream be AAC, and VDubMod only supports MP3.
There's nothing stopping MP3 audio from going into an MP4 file -- it's part of the spec -- but "mp4box" wasn't built to recognize MP3. There always seems to be a catch with open-source, because everything's built to be just adequate enough for whatever they're doing -- if you want to add anything else to it, they think, you can write it yourself, because everyone in Linux Land is a programmer.
EDIT: THe reason turns out to be, as I discovered while using a program to identify and remove duplicate files (cleaned up 3 GB of them), that Omega's "MP4" is just an AVI with the wrong extension.
Just tried a few different Media Player Classic / K-Lite configurations. I uninstalled and everything reinstalled each time.
When you install K-Life, can:
-choose to install CoreAVC DirectShow decoder
-choose to install ffdshow
-choose to have ffdshow play back MP4V
There's also this little checkbox here:
K-Lite Basic installed
- no support (as expected)
K-Lite Standard | CoreAVC DirectShow | ffdshow (play MP4V) | Play QuickTime files
- works
K-Lite Standard | CoreAVC DirectShow | ffdshow (don't play MP4V) | Don't Play QuickTime (QT uninstalled)
- works
K-Lite Standard | No CoreAVC DirectShow | ffdshow (play MP4V) | Don't play QuickTime files (QT uninstalled)
- works
K-Lite Standard | No CoreAVC DirectShow | ffdshow (don't play MP4V) | Don't Play QuickTime
- works (ffdshow is probably just using its XviD decoder instead; shows how much redundancy is built into this thing)
K-Lite Standard | No CoreAVC DirectShow | No ffdshow | Don't Play QuickTime
- no support (obviously)
Normally I don't use K-Lite but it appears that portman.mp4 works in pretty much every configuration unless you specifically tell it, for the love of god, never play an MPEG-4 movie on this machine (see last option).
http://s3plan.com/showerscene.mp4
Here's another H.264 MP4 for you. This time I encoded it with QuickTime Pro, using the official H.264 encoders from MPEG-LA. If it doesn't work, you're doing something wrong.
But you're missing the point, I think: the main concern [1] is that people can watch these videos on their computers, so while the ability to watch stuff on other devices is a plus, it's not really relevant for determining what the best container format, codec and all that is.
QuickTime's not a device. Millions of people have QuickTime on their computers, and that is an instant MPEG-4 platform right there. And RealPlayer is either in the process of or has put MPEG-4 into their player. What if someone else wanted to make a GPL player that followed the spec to the letter and didn't bother implementing the nonstandard AVI hacks?
And what should be relevant for determining what the best container format?
- Ubiquity?
MP4 wins here. QuickTime is preinstalled on tons of computers (easily eclipses users of all codec packs combined), and also comes with every copy of iTunes, and we know how popular that's become.
- Actual support for the features of the codec?
MP4 wins again. We've been over the B-frame issue.
- File size and performance?
MP4 has a faster seek time than AVI, has less overhead, and muxes faster.
So basically the only argument for AVI is "That's the way we've always done it," because we like complexity for the sake of complexity.
I think you definitely need some sleep. ^^
I was joking. Well, I mean, I've still actually been up for 24 hours, but not that it has anything to do with this thread. I'm waiting until it gets as late as possible before sleep right now so that my days and nights don't suddenly get flipflopped.
Only in MPC's case, due to its schizophrenia of having potentially three fucking decoders in separate places that do the same goddam thing.
So how do I watch Quicktime and Realmedia if I'm supposed to use MPC without QA and RA?
Well, ffmpeg has reverse-engineered that pesky Sorenson 3 video codec that's in all the QuickTime movies (the audio's usually only MP3).
You can play them in VLC, as I think that's the only player that has support for both ffmpeg and the MOV file format (which is actually what MP4 is based on).
MOV hasn't been implemented in a DirectShow decoder mostly out of apathy, I guess. The format is openly documented, and is really just a subset of the already-supported MP4. So. The code's already written.
schneelocke wrote:
I'm not quite sure I'm following you, myself. The published movies work - what else do you expect? They're not going to work more because you use a different container format. :)
The published files work in players specifically designed to accomodate them, not on the rest of the MPEG-4 platform. Any commercial version of MPEG-4 -- QuickTime, an iPod, an HD-DVD you burned that you want to work in an HD-DVD player, or maybe on the PS3's media center capabilities -- that is actually following the spec and going by the book doesn't know how to read AVI, because it's not part of the spec.
Now, I'm not saying I would be watching a speed-run on an iPod, or anything, but every step towards legitimacy and uniformity the format takes brings us closer to the day when we don't have to have these kinds of threads about, oh, maybe the problem is that player x is looking for codec y in library z, but I don't know what the problem is. Wouldn't it be nice to download a video file and just know it's going to work, just like an MP3 or a JPEG?
And I'm not getting "worked up." I've been up over 24 hours at this point. I feel like Jack Bauer. Hunting down the evil AVI-using terrorists.
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
...Or is it? You could change the world if you manage to tell enough people about something!
This isn't the first place I've raised this issue with. I don't actively go out looking for sites like this, but if I happen to be a member/user of the site, of course I'm going to educate them. Some people just don't give a fuck, some people thank me, say "I had no idea." Because now they don't have to worry about who can open the peanut bag and who can't.
Why didn't you call me out on that in my first post, where I didn't only use fuck three times, but used it in two consecutive sentences!
MPEG-4 gets me angry, man. Some people get pissed about sloppy, IE-only web design. For me, it's about the general apathy towards seeing the best media format on earth go to shit.
So these other decoding things we've been telling people to download are ruining their media players' ability to play mp4 correctly?
Only in MPC's case, due to its schizophrenia of having potentially three fucking decoders in separate places that do the same goddam thing.
All the other players are either strictly DirectShow front-ends (Windows Media Player, Winamp) or all-in-one players with everything built-in (VLC, MPlayer).
The race is on to see who will solve this problem first! Will QuickTime Alternative support H.264 first? Or will MPC learn to leave the QuickTime library alone for anything that isn't .mov? I'M ON THE EDGE OF MY SEAT.
Just as another strike against .mp4, I was unable to play Omega's output.mp4 with my basic setup.
I'm using Media Player Classic with the most recent k-lite codec pack. The error I get is...
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/58/error7be.jpg
I could try and get it to work with my other stuff, but it's honestly not worth the effort to try and fulfill a standard.
Media Player Classic's weird. It's a stand-alone player which contains a complete decoding library for MPEG-1, 2, and 4, like VLC, but it's also a front-end for DirectShow and can utilize your "Video for Windows" codecs/containers. Maybe it's confusing itself about where it should be decoding from.
JXQ wrote:
MPC (with ffdshow), what I use to watch all the AVI's I download here, did not play this file for me. It loaded it, detected its length (2:30 or so), and then just sat there and wouldn't play.
I also have Quicktime Alternative installed, but I wouldn't think that should cause problems.
QuickTime and RealPlayer architectures
Although this player is primarily based on the DirectShow architecture, if installed on your computer, it can also use the QuickTime and the RealPlayer architectures to play their native files.
The playing compatibility of Media Player depends on the availability of DirectShow, QuickTime, RealMedia and Shockwave filters. There are two distributions known as QuickTime Alternative and Real Alternative which bundle the required QuickTime and RealPlayer components without the need to install the corresponding players.
I believe QuickTime Alternative supports up to QuickTime 6, but doesn't have the new H.264 codec introduced in QuickTime 7. Instead of falling back on a DirectShow decoder (or, hell, even its own built-in MPEG-4 implementation), Media Player Classic is digging in the QuickTime library and it can't find the codec QA doesn't support. That's the program's problem, if you ask me. And a hell of an obscure one. It hardly spells doom for my graph.
No, I didn't skip that. FWIW, I didn't/don't want to say that either MP4 or AVI is better, anyway; I just wanted to point out that it's silly to create graphs from thin air when you have no data to base them on at all.
Yeah, a Venn diagram would have been better, since I was only showing a relationship between absolutes ("While all human beings have DNA, not all human beings have a penis"), not percentiles.
Did the MP4 work for you?
Try opening in all of these:
- QuickTime 7 (QT7 added H.264 support)
- VLC (don't know how recently they added H.264 support)
- Windows Media Player with ffdshow or DefilerPak
Sorry, I only trust fake statistics I created myself.
The point was basically just to show that 100% of people have MP4 support, which they do.
Maybe you skipped this:
Or here's a better analogy for you:
If you send an MP3 to anyone, you know they'll be able to play it, right? Any MP3 player can play an MP3 file.
But what if you decided to put MP3 music into a .WAV file, because you were feeling adventurous. You are still able to play it because the MP3 player you are using was written in a special way just to accomodate someone who might be retarded enough to mix two things that normally don't go together. Now imagine that about 50% of the world also has this software that can read these weird MP3s-inside-of-WAV combinations. You tell me what makes more sense: Just offering a regular ol' MP3 that everyone can read? Or doing this crazy mixed format hacking crap that leaves a lot of people scratching their heads?
This is the current situation we are dealing with concerning MPEG-4.
some movies on this very site were encoded into the mp4 and even mkv containers, as tests mostly, but it seems it was abandonned. I suppose that the main reason is, that there are already too many people having problem reading the .avi files, and that mp4 isn't as much as widely supported by players.
First of all, they are only having the problems because the movies are in AVI containers. H.264 isn't compatible with that format, except with hacks.
Secondly, anything that can play H.264 can already read MP4 by default. The ones that go out of their way to support the AVI hacks are the EXCEPTION.
Maybe a graph would better demonstrate:
As you can see, there's no group that can read JUST the AVI hack. You can either read only MP4, or you can read both MP4 and the AVI hack. 100% of people that can watch H.264 can read MP4, whereas only a fraction can use the AVI hack.
Or here's a better analogy for you:
If you send an MP3 to anyone, you know they'll be able to play it, right? Any MP3 player can play an MP3 file.
But what if you decided to put MP3 music into a .WAV file, because you were feeling adventurous. You are still able to play it because the MP3 player you are using was written in a special way just to accomodate someone who might be retarded enough to mix two things that normally don't go together. Now imagine that about 50% of the world also has this software that can read these weird MP3s-inside-of-WAV combinations. You tell me what makes more sense: Just offering a regular ol' MP3 that everyone can read? Or doing this crazy mixed format hacking crap that leaves a lot of people scratching their heads?
This is the current situation we are dealing with concerning MPEG-4.
besides, since the added functionnalities that mp4 offer aren't used, and that the avi files are small, of good quality and readable by everyone, the need isn't exactly an emergency.
Actually, the functionality of MP4 is used in every H.264 file, like B-Frames, which are video frames that get reference data from frames earlier or later in the stream than what it's actually showing right now. Huge feature of MP4, not compatible with AVI, unless the person who wrote the program made this crazy way of telling AVI how to read B-Frames.
as long as they can watch it, people are happy ;)
People are clearly having issues, just look around.
I'm going to assume that all this helpful information is merely an April Fool prank and ignore it!
It's not. Please check out the Wikipedia links.
You will lose nothing by using a container format that H.264 is actually compatible with, and you will gain more compatibility and smaller file size due to less overhead.
Quicktime only includes a method to decode H.264 streams within Quicktime files, but as far as I know, it does not contain a generic-use VideoForWindows/DirectShow codec for H264 decoding. It's only a Quicktime thing, with no use for anything else.
Wrong. QuickTime actually has a perfect, industry standard implementation of H.264, and supports it in all the container formats it is supposed to work with, including .MP4.
The problem is your AVI container which is actually incompatible with the many features of H.264 and MPEG-4 in general, such as B-Frames, etc. Decoders like ffmpeg get around this problem with hacks, but H.264 inside AVI files really shouldn't be encouraged, because it creates compatibility problems like the one mentioned in this thread.
Learn more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVIhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_container_formats
I also made a thread recommending a solution to this problem here:
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3594
The AVI container doesn't actually support the modern features of MPEG-4 codecs (XviD, DivX, especially H.264), like B-Frames, subtitles, etc. Decoders use hacks to get around the limitations of AVI, and the result is basically a compatibility clusterfuck of epic proportions between various players.
You can learn more from these articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVIhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_container_formats
For example, was a thread here about someone not able to run an H.264 in QuickTime. The problem wasn't with QuickTime, as QT actually has a perfect, industry-standard implementation of MPEG-4 and H.264. The problem is the AVI format you wrapped it in, which isn't compatible.
A little history lesson on MPEG-4.
You can think of MPEG-4 a lot like MP3. Any MP3 player will play MP3, right? It doesn't matter if it was encoded with the official Fraunhofer encoder, ffmpeg, LAME, or anything else, it "just works" and plays anywhere.
This is actually how MPEG-4 was designed. Any MPEG-4 codec, whether it be DivX, XviD, Nero, Apple's MPEG-4 codec, 3viX, whatever, will "just work" on any MPEG-4 implementation.
The key is putting it in the container it was designed for. Putting MPEG-4 in an AVI is like putting a JPEG in a TXT file. The container for MPEG-4 is... drumroll... MP4.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP4
So right now you can make an XviD- or x264-encoded MP4 and it will just play in QuickTime, iPod, VLC, ffdshow/DefilerPak, XMBC, MPlayer, etc., because that's what it was designed to do. Some players/codec packs like VLC and ffdshow/DefilerPak also go out of their way to support the AVI hack, but it's best not to encourage the black sheep.
You can liken it to the current Internet Explorer 6 versus Everything Else battle today on the web. Except the metaphor would have to be that 100% of people browsing the web are using Firefox, but web developers continue to code for IE, so Mozilla just writes an IE compatibility layer into Firefox, and everyone continues traveling along this retarded fucking detour. It's truly fucked up.
Bottom line: There is absolutely no reason to use AVI anymore. Anyone who can play the hack can also play MP4, so using AVI only limits the people who can play it.
K-Lite Basic installed
- no support (as expected)
K-Lite Standard | CoreAVC DirectShow | ffdshow (play MP4V) | Play QuickTime files
- works
K-Lite Standard | CoreAVC DirectShow | ffdshow (don't play MP4V) | Don't Play QuickTime (QT uninstalled)
- works
K-Lite Standard | No CoreAVC DirectShow | ffdshow (play MP4V) | Don't play QuickTime files (QT uninstalled)
- works
K-Lite Standard | No CoreAVC DirectShow | ffdshow (don't play MP4V) | Don't Play QuickTime
- works (ffdshow is probably just using its XviD decoder instead; shows how much redundancy is built into this thing)
K-Lite Standard | No CoreAVC DirectShow | No ffdshow | Don't Play QuickTime
- no support (obviously)
Normally I don't use K-Lite but it appears that portman.mp4 works in pretty much every configuration unless you specifically tell it, for the love of god, never play an MPEG-4 movie on this machine (see last option).
http://s3plan.com/showerscene.mp4
Here's another H.264 MP4 for you. This time I encoded it with QuickTime Pro, using the official H.264 encoders from MPEG-LA. If it doesn't work, you're doing something wrong.
As you can see, there's no group that can read JUST the AVI hack. You can either read only MP4, or you can read both MP4 and the AVI hack. 100% of people that can watch H.264 can read MP4, whereas only a fraction can use the AVI hack.
Or here's a better analogy for you:
If you send an MP3 to anyone, you know they'll be able to play it, right? Any MP3 player can play an MP3 file.
But what if you decided to put MP3 music into a .WAV file, because you were feeling adventurous. You are still able to play it because the MP3 player you are using was written in a special way just to accomodate someone who might be retarded enough to mix two things that normally don't go together. Now imagine that about 50% of the world also has this software that can read these weird MP3s-inside-of-WAV combinations. You tell me what makes more sense: Just offering a regular ol' MP3 that everyone can read? Or doing this crazy mixed format hacking crap that leaves a lot of people scratching their heads?
This is the current situation we are dealing with concerning MPEG-4.
