Problem watching or decrypting h264 files

[schnikies79]

I have some shows in h264 that wont play in anything except Media Player Classic, which they play perfectly in. Media Player gives errors and Quicktime shuts down when I try to play them. Playing in Media Player Classic is fine except that I want to change them into a more managable format to burn to dvd or to lower the res and compress to divx.

I tried to rip the video from the file with mp4box but I've had no luck, it says the video is invalid. It has no problem with the audio. I ended up installing YAMB to get more info and this is what it says. It will rip the video to avi, but when to play it, it crashed Media Player.



Track # 1 Info - TrackID 1 - TimeScale 324752 - Duration 00:44:32.488
Media Info: Language "und" - Type "vide" - Sub Type "avc1" - 64074 samples
MPEG-4 Config: Visual Stream - ObjectTypeIndication 0x21
AVC/H264 Video - Visual Size 512 x 384 - Profile Unknown @ Level 5.1
Self-synchronized

Track # 2 Info - TrackID 2 - TimeScale 44100 - Duration 00:44:32.570
Media Info: Language "und" - Type "soun" - Sub Type "mp4a" - 57549 samples
MPEG-4 Config: Audio Stream - ObjectTypeIndication 0x40
MPEG-4 Audio AAC LC - 2 Channel(s) - SampleRate 22050 - SBR SampleRate 44100
Synchronized on stream 1


If anyone has any idea how to get these out of h264 or able to play in quicktime, please let me know! :D

[foxyshadis]

QT is garbage at playing avc, and media player is probably using some outdated (if any) directshow codec. Try installing the latest ffdshow and haali's splitter from free-codecs. Native-mode avc in mkv/mp4 will not be extractable to avi. You have to use several command-line tools and surprise, it still won't work in media player or quicktime.

They're also not "in" h264, as h264 is the video codec, they're "in" mp4. (apparently)

[schnikies79]

I already had ffdshow installed but not haali's splitter. After I installed it, they played fine in Media Player. Thanks!

Well I saw that it said avc/h264 so I thought that is what it was. I know the container is mp4. Okay, so what tools would I need to be decompress this to something more manageable? My real goal is to get them onto my ipod, which I can if I have it in mpg or avi.

[foxyshadis]

You'll need to reencode either way; ipod can use mp4 just as well as avi (better, I think), and if it won't load it's simply incompatible. If quicktime can't play it, ipod definitely can't. Load the file into megui and use its ipod x264 profile (and resize properly) to make a compatible file.

[bond]

the ipod can play avc-in-mp4, but i doubt it handles the 512 x 384 resolution your stream now has, so you need to reencode
the best codec to use would be propably x264 (which can also output to .mp4)

if you go via avisynth (directshowsource) you dont need to reencode to avi or mpg for later on encoding again to mp4 (which saves you reencoding for one time and therefore quality and time)
as the video plays in mpc, directshowsource should work

[schnikies79]

Well I wanted to do more with it than just use it on my ipod, such as burning it to dvd so I would like to get it in uncompressed format. Any way to get in into raw avi?

[bond]

the raw avi would be many gbs big. there is no need to go via avi

create a .avs script in which you load your .mp4 via directshowsource("c:/path to/file.mp4")

that .avs file can be loaded into most encoders, eg x264 (which outputs to .mp4) or some dvd encoders

[schnikies79]

alrightythen, i'll try that out and come back with the results

[schnikies79]

Well everything seems to be working, more or less. I used ce-baseline from the available profiles so it would work with quicktime 7, only problem is I get this message:

2002: a bad public movie atom was found in the movie

I know there are some commands to fix this but I don't quite understand them yet, any ideas?