Super compatible codec?

[crazychicken]

When encoding with mencoder, I'd like the video to work on windows with no codecs installed, as well as inside powerpoint. Does anyone know which codec does the LEAST amount of compression so that it will work with the MOST systems?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Without additional software Windows doesn't support anything expect MPEG-1 and a few legacy formats (e.g. Indeo and Cinepak).
Windows 7 will also support MPEG-4 ASP (DivX, Xvid, etc) and H.264 (e.g. x264) natively, but it will take decades until you can assume that the majority of Windows users is on Windows 7 (or later).
Also the different version of Windows ship with support for different versions of WMV. But WMV certainly is not a "super compatible" Codec...

[Dark Shikari]

Without additional software Windows doesn't support anything expect MPEG-1 and a few legacy formats (e.g. Indeo and Cinepak).And MSMPEG4v2, predecessor to WMV (and, software-wise, DivX and Xvid, for that matter).

[crazychicken]

Hm..

When I encode with:

mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf type=jpg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg1video -oac
copy -o test.avi


windows media player plays it very badly (it plays about every 20 frames?) and complains about the codec. (it plays fine with mplayer in linux)

When I encode with :

mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf type=jpg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4v2 -oac
copy -o test.avi


windows media player plays it fine, but inside powerpoint, the video is just black. Any more thoughts?

Thanks so far :)

[LoRd_MuldeR]

MPEG-1 video should be stored in a MPEG-PS container, not inside AVI.

[crazychicken]

Do I do that simply by changing the extension?


mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf type=jpg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg1video -oac
copy -o test.mpg


and then you expect it to work in powerpoint as well?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

No, renaming an AVI file to .mpg doesn't make it an MPEG-PS file. The result would be an AVI file with a "wrong" extension, but still an AVI file!

What I mean is, put the MPEG-1 stream into a MPEG-PS container instead of AVI. I cannot tell you the exact ffmpeg commandline for that (and I'm too lazy to search now).

But it should be relatively easy for you find out the required parameters from the ffmpeg docs ;)

[Brazil2]

mencoder.exe -of mpeg -mpegopts format=mpeg1 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg1video

[crazychicken]

Ok, here is the latest command:

mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf type=jpg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg1video -oac copy -of mpeg -mpegopts format=mpeg1 -o video.mpg


Now windows media player says "either the file is corrupt or the player does not support the format you are trying to play". (it still plays fine with mplayer)

grrrrr!!

[Brazil2]

Remove the audio "-oac copy" since there is no audio in JPG files as far as I know.
I have the feeling that it might create a fake and empty audio track which could cause troubles to some splitters.

And also you should post a sample of the resulting video so we can check what is going wrong.

[crazychicken]

I removed the "-oac copy" and nothing changed (file size was exactly the same and media player produced the same error). I put 10 frames of the video into the attached file (so it would fit the size allowance). I don't think there is anything wrong with the file - I can play it with mplayer, it is simply that it isn't compatible with windows media player "out of the box".

[LoRd_MuldeR]

As you just realized, Windows Media Player is almost useless "out of the box", especially if we aren't talking about the very latest versions of Windows.

You know that MPlayer and VLC have Windows ports that work absolutely fine? Also we have Media Player Class (Home Cinema), if you prefer a DirectShow-based solution.

If you rely on WMP and don't care about the Non-Windows world, then WMV1 (aka WMV7) may be an option. Should be supported natively on Win2k and later.

[mariush]

best bet would be for you to bundle your software or product with the redistributable codecs pack from Microsoft...

Can't find right now on Microsoft's site, I think it may be this one:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/format/codecdownload.aspx

If you're not thinking about software but just inserting video in documents, probably the best would be to use MPEG 1

[crazychicken]

Lord_Mulder - The idea is that when I submit videos to a conference or some other "mass audience" type place where I am not allowed to upload anything but the video file, I'd like it to be played by as many people as possible. I was taking the worst case user example of having no other players/any codecs installed. As you mentioned - if this was just for my use I would clearly opt for anything besides media player ;)

mariush - I tried inserting the MPEG1 into powerpoint and it doesn't work - have you done this?

wmv1 works perfectly with "out of the box windows media player", but is still just black inside powerpoint. The other problem with wmv is it isn't natively supported in some linux distributions (ie fedora) so now the other half of the audience can possibly not view it!!

It's amazing what a pain this is lol.

[mariush]

Well, would it be possible for you to convert your powerpoint presentation in a video? You could make a movie with Camtasia and then cut it in two parts, first part being up until the slide where you're supposed to have the movie inside the powerpoint.
Make a screenshot of the slide and overlay your other video over that slide using Avisynth and generate a clip, and then merge all three parts together.

For presentations or conferences, I would be more comfortable authoring a DVD video with the whole stuff, so that they only need to put it in and play it with the DVD player they have installed. Or, just make a data DVD with the movie and a basic video player like Media Player Classic Home Cinema set to play the movie automatically using the Autorun feature, which can run straight from DVD and has codecs inside to play the DVD without touching anything on the computer.

Or, have the whole video converted to a FLV file, with a html page on the DVD which shows a flash video player (JW FLV Media Player is free and small) which then plays the FLV file. As a +, this will probably work on both Linux and Windows and the chances they won't have Flash installed are small imho.

Now that I think about it more, you can use Adobe Acrobat Pro (maybe something free can also do it but I haven't tested with something else) to attach files to a PDF document. At least in Adobe Acrobat, when you open the document at the bottom it shows all the files attached to it so user can double click and open it in their video player. Maybe Open Office can even include the video as an object on a PDF page but I don't have it installed so I can't test.

They should be able to run PDF files at conferences, just as easy as they can run powerpoint files.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

@crazychicken:

My "MakeInstantPlayer" tool may be what you need. It bundles the video clip with MPlayer to a self-running EXE file.
Nothing needs to be installed. All required files (basically the MPlayer.exe and the clip) will be extracted to %TEMP% and cleaned up afterwards.
And since MPlayer is used, you can use almost any video/audio/container format in existence!

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=124111

[Guest]

@crazychicken

Please use mediafire.com for large files rather than attaching them.

[vlada]

I just tried the commandline from crazychicken. It produces a video which plays in MPC but doesn't play in WMP using MS or Haali splitter. I tried this ffmpeg command line:
ffmpeg -i video.avi -an video.mpg
This produces an MPEG-1 video which plays fine in WMP. But I'm not sure if you can use sequency of JPEG files as input in ffmpeg.

[benwaggoner]

When encoding with mencoder, I'd like the video to work on windows with no codecs installed, as well as inside powerpoint. Does anyone know which codec does the LEAST amount of compression so that it will work with the MOST systems?
By "Most" would Windows Media Player 9 or higher be a sufficient requirement? That means XP SP2 or higher, plus any 2000, 98, or ME systems that have installed WMP9.

That would let you use WMV with WMV 9/VC-1 Main Profile and WMA or WMA Pro, with much better encoding efficiency than MPEG-1, and pretty good playback performance.

MPEG-1 is compatible back to Win95 (further?), but needs a lot more bits to achieve the same quality level.

If you're going to sweat pre-WMP 9 systems, make sure you're encoding as square pixel. Previous versions of WMP didn't handle non-square pixels correctly.

Can your Linux users play a .ppt/.pptx with embeded video of any type? It would be helpful if you could offer more details about your audience.

[crazychicken]

Sure, for windows, WMP9 and above is fine. The linux users should be able to use mplayer without having to install the "win32" codecs.

[blah789]

MPEG-1 is compatible back to Win95 (further?),*snip*
Windows 95B to be exact. It was part of ActiveMovie. You can install it in Windows 95A by installing ActiveMovie or Windows Media Player.