[X4U] Help with MPEG-4 and iMac

Michael Winter winter at mac.com
Wed Dec 8 07:39:52 PST 2004


On Dec 8, 2004, at 9:15 AM, B.ru c-e €K1u-tch-k0 wrote:

>  I can play back the video on the Mac using VLC, which has the MPEG-4 
> codec that QuickTime doesn’t.

If its MPEG-4, QuickTime should handle it unless its in some funny kind 
of wrapper. First thing I would do is start playing it in VLC and 
select "Info" from the "Window" menu. I'm guessing there should be two 
streams, one audio and one video. Both need to be something Quicktime 
can handle (preferable both mp4 based).

If it looks like it is a legitimate MPEG-4 file, my next questions are 
what happens when you try to get QuickTime Player to play it and what 
three letter extension (if any) is on the file? If the file doesn't 
have an .mp4 on the end of the filename, try putting one there and see 
if it will now play in QuickTime Player.

>  I’d prefer to make a VCD, as I don’t have a DVD writer on my ancient 
> iMac, so I’d like to convert it to another format. The quality of the 
> pictures (limited pixels, low sensitivity of the camera) means that 
> itonly has VHS or VCD quality anyway.

I use Toast 6 to do this. Ironically, it seems to handle some video 
files that QuickTime Player balks on.

Good Luck.

-Mike



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