H.264 playable Quicktime player possible?

I downloaded a few H.264 encodes but they dont play in Quicktime player but I could play in VLC fine.

Just wondering why these files do not play in Apple Quicktime player. I even tried adding the QT component Perian but it didnt help.

I would like to play H.264 encodes in QT player without re-encoding.

My end goal is to play these files on my AppleTV with the correct QT component.

thanx
hanzo

Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 11:00 am Post subject: Hmmmm... Post Rating: 0

My guess is that your files you want to play have a .MKV extension, or
Maroska video format and I don't believe you can play those directly in
quicktime.

Checking the AppleTV specs, this is what that device supports:

Video formats supported
H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): Up to 5 Mbps, Progressive Main Profile (CAVLC) with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps (maximum resolution: 1280 by 720 pixels at 24 fps, 960 by 540 pixels at 30 fps) in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats
iTunes Store purchased video: 320 by 240 pixels or 640 by 480 pixels
MPEG-4: Up to 3 Mbps, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps (maximum resolution: 720 by 432 pixels at 30 fps) in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats

So there you go - there is no way to play an .MKV file directly in quicktime
at this time. It plays .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats. So you would have
to use something like ffmpegx to cross convert.

Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 11:07 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

I downloaded a file with a .mp4 extension. One of the J-TV shows (latest London Hearts). The file info shows its H.264 encoded which is werid cause I could not play it in QT. Maybe it was some unstandard weird encoding from JP.

My AppleTV should play it back since it plays other H.264 media.

I just finished re-encoding the files back to divx (.avi) with Visualhub. Oh well.. My AppleTV can play divx via the Perian component so its alright.

thanks for your response anyways.
hanzo

Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 6:38 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

There are different options during h.264 compression, one of them is to use b-pyramid, or b-frames as reference frames. This feature is not supported by quicktime, and any h.264 compression that was made with this option checked (which maximizes compression) will not be playable in quicktime.

Some groups will allow for this and conform their h.264 encodes to the quicktime format. However, most groups either don't know about this or just don't care, and will therefore make encodes that are not playable in quicktime (even though it is h.264).

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 12:30 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Thanks for the info ethidda. I will keep that in mind.

cheers
hanzo thumleft