Quicktime woes! (MOV->MPG)

[Xesdeeni]

[Moderators: I have no idea where to put this post, so please relocate it if you have to.]

After viewing Starship Exeter (http://homepage.mac.com/starshipexeter/), a fan-made Star Trek episode (original series time period), I found the Hidden Frontier (http://www.hiddenfrontier.org/) series of fan-made Star Trek episodes (Next Generation time period), too.

In the spirit of a TV show, I wanted to watch these programs on the TV, instead of the PC, and of course add them to my living-room video collection. Although the main Starship Exeter site offers the show in Quicktime format, a couple of Starship Exeter mirrors offer it in VCD format (http://starshipexeter.pdox.net/mpg/mirrors.html), which I used to make a VCD and watch.

However, Hidden Frontier offers only Quicktime versions of their episodes, so I've been trying to convert them to VCD format. But Quicktime is giving me fits! Using QTReader.vfp (http://www.digital-digest.net/downloads/files/encode/QTReader.zip) as a plugin for TMPGEnc caused a math error about a minute into the first part of the first episode (101ACT1.MOV (http://www.hiddenfrontier.org/video/101Act1.mov)).

MOV2AVI (http://www.divx-digest.com/software/mov2avi.html) did not recognize the codec using in these files.

TRMOOV (http://www.downrecs.com/software.html) gives an initialization error.

Using the QTReader.vfp plugin with AVISynth is the closest I can get, but I get a 600fps, upside-down (yeah, AVISynth can fix this), video with serious color problems (looks like too few bits for color, but it's not this way with the Quicktime viewer), and overall it's very unstable and crashes randomly.Is there another approach that I can take?

Xesdeeni

[sh0dan]

Even though Quicktime isn't new, this is probably where you'll be able to get the most help!

[DDogg]

Just for info, show us the script you were using with qtreader and avisynth. I'm not good for much fancy avisynth work, but I have a lot of format conversion skills and tools. Give me a link to some source. I can't seem to get to the link above.

[Kosh Ulkesh]

I have managed to convert mov (quicktime) to avi (divx) using Rad Video Tools - just follow this guide: http://www.dvdrhelp.com/mov2avi.htm
After that, you could just convert the file to mpg2. I know it isn't the best solution, but it's one way to do it.

[Alxemi]

Hum... I have converted MOVs into avis many times... but only short clips. I opened the mov with adobe premiere, and save a HUGE .avi uncompressed. (1min=2GB) then with vdub compress using your favourite codec.
I dont remember how to do it exactly, but im sure is not difficult, because I did it ;) and i´m a complety premiere-ignorant

please excuse my this-time-horrible english

[Kurosu]

I've tested the provided mov with TMPEG. It encodes fine (except for the sound - of course). So I bet your QTreader.vfp (mine is 81,920 bytes and its CRC-32 is 6358C9F7) or your TMPEG (mine is 2.59) isn't the latest.

QTReader loaded in Avisynth does the same thing as for you.

[Xesdeeni]

@DDogg: Taken from AVISynth FAQ (http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=Section+2%3A+AviSynth+and+frameserving), question Q2.10:
LoadVFAPIPlugin("QTReader.vfp", "QTReader")
QTReader("101ACT1.mov")
SelectEvery(40, 0) # MOV isn't 600fps, it's 15fps
AssumeFPS(15)
FlipVertical()
@Kosh Ulkesh: I guess I should have mentioned that I tried RadTools on the Quicktime version of the Starship Exeter video before I found the VCD version (I didn't want to admit I'd missed the MPEG the first time around :-|). As I recall, it created an AVI that couldn't be read by anything else I tried (VirtualDub, MediaPlayer, TMPGEnc, etc.). So I uninstalled it. At that time I found the QTReader.vfp above and that mostly worked (there were a few glitches where the video sped up ahead of the audio and then later the audio caught up to get into synch again...weird). I guess I may have to try RadTools again though.

@Alxemi: I actually tried Premiere 6.5 as well. I figured a program that started on the Mac would surely read the Quicktime format. But when I went to import the MOV files, it refused. The error it gave was the completely uninformative "Unable to open that file. File contains no audio or video, or is in use by another application."

Any more ideas before I try RadTools again?

Xesdeeni

[cweb]

I downloaded the Exeter fan video and converted it into KVCD from VCD. But I did look at the possibility of converting it from Quicktime, simply using TMPGENC plus with QTreader.vfp registered and RAISED TO THE HIGHEST PRIORITY. I had problems to get it to work with an avisynth script. My solution when I would need to filter the video, would be to use TMPGENC to create a huffy video file, then process the huffy file using an avisynth script using Virtualdubmod or Tmpgenc itself once more.


So I settled for converting that to KVCD and another version I created was XviD/OGM instead. I did convert a Quicktime clip I had from an extended music CD into KVCD using the above method however. To convert the sound I used Cooledit in recording mode while the Quicktime player played the video. I could not find any other way of extracting the sound without purchasing some sound capture software, which I found was not needed on my hardware somehow.

[Alxemi]

Here is a script that seems to work OK

LoadVFAPIPlugin("C:\archiv~1\gordia~1\QTReader.vfp", "QTReader")
QTReader("e:\superbowltrailer640_dl.mov")
LoadPlugin("c:\archiv~1\gordia~1\FluxSmooth-2.5.dll")
ConvertToYUY2()
FlipVertical()
SelectEvery(25,1)
FluxSmooth()

I found it in the forum, (the FluxSmooth is my own)

Maybe helps

[Xesdeeni]

OK folks. I tried the newest version of RadTools again and I got the same problems as before.

I tried to convert the first part of the first episode (see above). First, it wouldn't recognize the audio, but I figured I'd deal with that later. Anyway, it appeared to convert the video to a 190MB HuffYUV-encoded AVI. But nothing will deal with the file. VirtualDub says it can't identify the file type, and MediaPlayer just says "Opening..." for a while and then says "Cannot play back file. The format is not supported."

I tried again with uncompressed full frames, which gave a 883MB file. This time MediaPlayer just hangs with the "Opening..." message, and VirtualDub says it' can't identify the file type.

I also tried with the Cinepak codec, just for grins. Same result.

Looking at the output file, I don't see the RIFF header I would have expected. It looks like just raw data. No wonder nothing recognizes it!

Any other ideas?

Xesdeeni

[Xesdeeni]

I e-mailed the Hidden Frontier contact last week, but I haven't received a response.

Has anyone had any luck converting these files?

Xesdeeni

[Perplx]

I just tried to convert that file by opening it, and then exporting using Quicktime 6 Pro and it gave the error "Couldn't export the movie "101Act1.mov" because this movie does not allow saving."

But I just found a bug in Quicktime Pro that will let you save all protected media!

1. Open any unprotected media (a jpg will work) in quicktime, try to make it the same size.

2. Append you protected video by dragging and dropping on to quicktime.

3. Now the export funtion will work because quicktime only keeps the protection settings of the intial file!

Then just remove the first frame and you done. But you need the full version of quicktime to export at all. Now I can convert the T3 trailer!

[CharlyAR]

"But I just found a bug in Quicktime Pro that will let you save all protected media!
[...]"

Hey! Cool! This is a very good one, this is perfect! You can even exports those "full-screen" trailers that comes with many tracks, you can delete, extract, etc, etc.

I did it with final trailer of T3 and it works just perfect, you can save it to a "standard" .mov and then work with Radtools from there!

Thanx!

[lighty]

You can find QuickTime codec pack that allows playing QT files in MP rather than in the QT crapy player. I am not sure though if it will help you to open files in VirDub or any other program. Worth a try though.

[CharlyAR]

Yes, I saw it, but has some problems dealing with "full screen" Quicktime videos that have many different tracks lique borders and other stuff (for example T3 full trailer).
This way is a lot easier! ;)

[ooops!]

If you upgrade to the pro version of Quicktime 6 (or 6.1) all you have do is export as Perplx says!

Click on your 'quicktime' file to launch the player,
Click on 'File' select 'Export' in 'Export' box select 'Movie to AVI'
Click on 'Options'. The 'AVI Settings' panel should now appear.

In the 'Video' section. Select 'Settings'. Then in the 'Compression Settings' panel select one of the DVCPRO options (PAL or NTSC). In the 'Quality' section select 'Best'. In the 'Motion' area, select your frame rate and click 'OK'

In the 'Sound' section. Select 'Settings'. Then in the 'Sound Settings' panel, under 'Compressor' select 'None' and then select the 'Rate' (44.100 or 48,000kHz), 'Size' (16 bit) and the 'Use' (Stereo) and click 'OK'

Don't forget to create a 'File Name' and the press 'Save'

With any luck you should end up with .avi file (at approx 225MB per min - the same bitrate per min a miniDV camera uses ) with an image size of 720x576.

If you play back this file in say WinMedia player, you should be pleasantly surprised how good it looks. Once the file is in this format you can do what you like with it in most encoder softwares.

I think that about covers it!

[Clown shoes]

I too am having a similar problem. I have finished working on a small project in Avid dv and due to file size issues have exported from the timeline as a QT reference file, enabling me to keep the footage uncompressed at the same time as using next to no room. The resulting file is excepted by CCE without any problems, however I need to frameserve it through AVISynth for some simple resizing, this is where I am having problems. The avs file is showing up in the CCE window as;

30,978 frames 00:20:39:03 duration

whereas dropping the .mov file straight into CCE results in;

30,765 frames 00:20:30:15 duration

This is the AVS script I have used;

LoadVFAPIPlugin("C:\QTReader\QTReader.Vfp","QTReader")
QTReader("I:\Untitled Sequence.01.mov")
SelectEvery(100,0)
AssumeFPS(25)
FlipVertical()

I have used SelectEvery(100,0) because without this CCE reads the avs file as 2,500 fps. My confusion arises from the fact that QT player like AVISynth reads the file as 00:20:39:03 but 24.83 fps? surely 0.07 of a frame could not be causing a 9 second offset on only 20 minutes of footage, and if it is the reason then why is this not apparent in the .mov file dropped straight into CCE. I must admit I am very tired and seriously overworked, so I am probably overlooking something obvious here. If someone could enlighten me I would be eternaly grateful.
Many thanks Richard

[Black Hole]

I'm also getting crazy with conversion of MOV files from Macintosh Avid Xpress or DV systems ... i really think it's about time for someone to develop a real QT parser for AviSynth, or the other way round: a HuffYUV AVI codec for QuickTime ... ¿any takers? :rolleyes: