Quicktime playback of x264 encodes

[twolfe18]

i have always used every compatibility-killing and quality-boosting option availible in x264 and i just play back the video in vlc or mplayer when i am on my mac, but quicktime has never been able to playback my encodes. it usually doesnt bother me, but lately i was wondering if there was some os x plugin that i could find that would allow me to playback video that is encode above high profile specs. any recommendations?

:thanks:

[Sharktooth]

http://developer.berlios.de/projects/x264qtcodec/
dont know if it has the decoder part too... but worth trying.

[cestfait]

perian.

[twolfe18]

i tried perian and that helped a little, but playback still isnt smooth (it gets a frame every second or two as opposed to maybe the first frame and then freezing). as for the x264qtcodec, it didnt mention that it had any decoding capabilities on their website, so i skipped it.

[Zep]

i tried perian and that helped a little, but playback still isnt smooth (it gets a frame every second or two as opposed to maybe the first frame and then freezing). as for the x264qtcodec, it didnt mention that it had any decoding capabilities on their website, so i skipped it.

since perian works fine here may I ask what box you are running on?

Can you play it back fine in mplayer or VLC? if you can with these but not perian then something very strange is going on and IIRC perian uses ffmpeg and so does VLC.

hmmm...

[twolfe18]

i am trying this on a mbp (2.2ghz c2d w/ 2gb ddr2 ram) running 10.5.1 (all software is up to date and everything). you can get a sample of the clip i am trying to play at: http://www.mediafire.com/?5z09tjevj2j

the file was encoded with x264 (via MeGUI) with everything just about maxed out. i can play this clip with vlc, but i have even had a problem with vlc being able to smoothly play one of my encodes. every file i have tried though has played on mplayer os x perfectly (i just prefer to use vlc). i did encode this particular inside of a parallel's virtual machine, but i dont think that would screw up the encode in any way.

[cestfait]

yes it would. I tried some encodes in parallels, which did weird stuff to them. I thought it was a memory issue, but nothing I tried helped them. you need to do the encode through full-blown windows. don't ask me why. :confused:

[microchip8]

No idea on why you can't play this file, but it works here on Linux without a problem, I tried VLC, MPlayer and Xine on it

[twolfe18]

well, i am away from my windows box right now, but i will give it a try again in a week or so. i still cant imagine that it should create any real problems though, especially since it can play in vlc and mplayer.

also, i know perian doesnt currently support mkv's, but i heard something about them fixing that soon... any idea how long i should expect to wait?

[rernst]

i have always used every compatibility-killing and quality-boosting option availible in x264 and i just play back the video in vlc or mplayer when i am on my mac, but quicktime has never been able to playback my encodes. it usually doesnt bother me, but lately i was wondering if there was some os x plugin that i could find that would allow me to playback video that is encode above high profile specs. any recommendations?

:thanks:

I am sure you have seen it but just to have mentioned it: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-quicktime-7.html

This describes how to create QT compliant H.264 (which is somewhat of a misnomer as QT is anything but H.264 compliant and shortchanges the abilities of that codec).

[rernst]

i am trying this on a mbp (2.2ghz c2d w/ 2gb ddr2 ram) running 10.5.1 (all software is up to date and everything). you can get a sample of the clip i am trying to play at: http://www.mediafire.com/?5z09tjevj2j

the file was encoded with x264 (via MeGUI) with everything just about maxed out. i can play this clip with vlc, but i have even had a problem with vlc being able to smoothly play one of my encodes. every file i have tried though has played on mplayer os x perfectly (i just prefer to use vlc). i did encode this particular inside of a parallel's virtual machine, but i dont think that would screw up the encode in any way.

Plays fine for me using vlc and mplayer.

[Zep]

I am sure you have seen it but just to have mentioned it: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-quicktime-7.html

This describes how to create QT compliant H.264 (which is somewhat of a misnomer as QT is anything but H.264 compliant and shortchanges the abilities of that codec).

ummm incorrect.

QT is a set of apps and codecs and api's etc... it supports h.264 100%. Now the apple h.264 codec QT defaults to using only supports the basic and main profiles but you can have QT use any 3rd party QT ready codec that supports h.264 high profile and it works fine. Apple has said over and over they have no plans to add more features to their h.264 codec because the third party ones do a great job and already support high profile and are free. Furthermore, apples codec is geared towards h.264 + aac in a mp4 wrapper so their priorities are not the same as others who appear to lean to having ac3 in a mkv wrapper.
remember mp4 is not meant to have ac3 in it.

Also your link is outdated since apples latest h.264 codec plays back 2+ b-frames fine in the test I just did.

[Zep]

yes it would. I tried some encodes in parallels, which did weird stuff to them. I thought it was a memory issue, but nothing I tried helped them. you need to do the encode through full-blown windows. don't ask me why. :confused:

I find that hard to believe. Did you ever to a checksum on the output and compare it to the same tools in a native windows setup output?

[rernst]

ummm incorrect.

QT is a set of apps and codecs and api's etc... it supports h.264 100%. Now the apple h.264 codec QT defaults to using only supports the basic and main profiles but you can have QT use any 3rd party QT ready codec that supports h.264 high profile and it works fine. Apple has said over and over they have no plans to add more features to their h.264 codec because the third party ones do a great job and already support high profile and are free. Furthermore, apples codec is geared towards h.264 + aac in a mp4 wrapper so their priorities are not the same as others who appear to lean to having ac3 in a mkv wrapper.
remember mp4 is not meant to have ac3 in it.

Also your link is outdated since apples latest h.264 codec plays back 2+ b-frames fine in the test I just did.

That is interesting. That means that the profiles mentioned in the h.264 forum and in Staxrip are incorrect. I'll take your word for it.

My tests, btw, have shown otherwise. QT stuttered horribly with files that did not comply with the profiles laid out in the article. They contained h.264 video and AAC audio (native to MP4 as far as I know) and played back fine with ffmpeg or just about anything else I could find. Only QT was struggling to render them (on a Windoze platform that is).

[cestfait]

I find that hard to believe. Did you ever to a checksum on the output and compare it to the same tools in a native windows setup output?

I didn't bother because the results were so disgusting. No matter what type of encoding I did, 1-pass crf 17.0, 1-pass cq 17, 2-pass bitrate 2000kbps, 3-pass bitrate 2000kbps, the encode just became unbearably blocky and ugly, as if there were never enough bits in the picture. Trying the same settings (yes, including the ones I didn't just mention) in native windows produced beautiful encodes.

I can't give you anything to go off of, really. Sorry! You might see if you can find a way to try it out for yourself.

I'm staying as far away from parallels as I can, though. :)

[twolfe18]

well, i think you may be having a different problem than me, there is probably something wrong with your parallels virtual machine (are you on G4/5 or Intel?). mine encoded fine, i can play it in vlc and mplayer, it just wont play in qt, even with perian installed.

[cacepi]

mine encoded fine, i can play it in vlc and mplayer, it just wont play in qt, even with perian installed.Perian doesn't include an mp4 splitter, so only supports H264 in AVI.

What you need is avc1Decoder, which can decode High Profile, 3+ b-frames, etc. Highly recommended.

http://www003.upp.so-net.ne.jp/mycometg3/

[twolfe18]

thanks caceepi, i downloaded and installed avc1Decoder and it works great. quicktime can play the file fine now (as well as quicklook or preview, whatever that really convenient leopard thingy is called). :)

:thanks: