problem encoding long (8 hour) mp4

[jbeale]

I'm using the MainConcept encoder that is part of Vegas 7. It has always worked well for me, I've done resolutions from 320x240 up to 1280x720. Recently I attempted to encode a long (8 hour 6 minute) video at 640x480 resolution. It "seemed" to work, finished normally after 60 hours (!) of encoding and the final file was 2.47 GB in size. However it was not recognized as valid .mp4 and not playable in any of my h.264 players: VLC, Nero or Quicktime. I went back and tried encoding again with the same parameters but only doing 1-hour long segments at a time. This works and plays back fine.

Has anyone else tried to encode this much video at a time into a AVC .mp4 file? Is it a limitation of the format or (more likely) just a bug in the MainConcept encoder, or maybe Vegas? Note, my drives are all NTFS so there is no 2 or 4 GB filesize limit. The source file is DV format, over 100 GB and it plays fine all the way through.

I also posted this question in the Sony Vegas forums but no one seems to have tried this before. http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=519082&Replies=2

[bond]

the problem might be that 64 bit times are (not) used

either the mainconcept encoder doesnt write 64bit times, altough it should. in this case its an encoder bug
or the players you mentioned dont support 64bit times, altough they should. -> player bug

run mp4dump from mpeg4ip over both files and post the outcome here

[jbeale]

Thanks bond for mentioning the mpeg4ip package, I didn't know about those utilities. Unfortunately I deleted the file yesterday since I couldn't open it, I figured it was useless.

I am generating a new "dummy" 8-hour mp4 at the minimum resolution that MainConcept handles (192x192), which still takes 3 hours. I will try out mp4dump on it, once it is complete.

[jbeale]

I made a simple test file, resolution 192x192, duration eight hours and six seconds long (863,317 frames at 29.97 fps) on my WinXP box. Two out of three players actually play the file:
VLC 0.8.6a player: plays correctly
Nero Showtime 2: plays correctly
QuickTime Player 7.1: does not play
----------

mp4info version 1.5.5
8hour-test1.mp4:
Track Type Info
1 audio MPEG-4 AAC LC, 28806.037 secs, 128 kbps, 48000 Hz
2 video H264 Main@1.2, 28806.010 secs, 9 kbps, 192x192 @ 29.970031 fps
------------
I have attached the mp4dump output as a text file if anyone's curious to see what the stats on an 8-hour mp4 file looks like. Anyway this one seems to play correctly in VLC so I guess the problem is specific to the earlier MainConcept encode I did at 640x480 resolution. I don't have another 60 hours to waste regenerating it, though.

[bond]

ok it doesnt use 64bit times, so its not that

quicktime is a crappy player so you never know whats the reason why it doesnt work. is there any error shown in qt?

maybe its also the strange brand used in the file. you can try to remux the file with mp4box (demux the streams to raw and remux to mp4) and see whether this works