[AuroraProject]

I made a movie on my MacBook Pro using iMovie, I then exported it as a 720p Quicktime movie. It plays fine on my Mac, but will not play on my Windows based computers.

What am I doing wrong?

 

[krmathis]

You use QuickTime Player on the Windows machine, right? If so, which audio/video codecs did you use to encode the movie.

 

[AuroraProject]

Yes, using Quicktime on the Windows boxes, as for codecs I couldn't tell you, whatever the Mac sets by default. I didn't change any settings in iMovie, I just told it to export as a 720p Quicktime file.

 

[AuroraProject]

Ok, looks like I used H.264 compression, do I need to switch that to MPEG-4 for Windows use?


Edit: excuse me if these are dumb questions, this is my first movie.

 

[krmathis]

I thought that QuickTime Player on MS Windows support the same codecs as the Mac OS one, but obviously not. Hmmm...
Yes, you might want to give MPEG-4 a try. Encode a small sample and give it a try.

 

[AuroraProject]

Ok, MPEG-4 works fine, but someone on Apples forums is telling me H.264 should play fine on Windows. I tried it on my 3 Windows machines and all would not play it.

 

[roastpuff]

Does it play with VLC for Windows? I don't particularly like QT, because VLC handles pretty much everything that QT handles and more.

 

[AuroraProject]

No, I downloaded and tried VLC as well, it plays the audio track only. Seems like I'm missing the video codec.

 

[rhythmicmoose]

You are running the latest version of QuickTime for Windows, correct? H.264 is a very new codec, introduced in QuickTime 7, I believe. If your Windows machine is not using QuickTime 7 or higher, it won't play.

 

[bball2]

Try installing a default codec pack, I usually get the k-lite codec pack on every new computer I use.

 

[Davesrose]

If you want to generate a quicktime movie, I'd use a sorenson codec. That way you're sure it's going to have a .mov extension that a Windows quicktime player will recognize and play. The problem with mp4 is that Apple's version is different then Microsoft's version of the codecs. So for compatibility, I tend to render either sorenson for quicktime and wmv for windows media player.

 

[AuroraProject]

I have installed a codec pack, no change, still just getting audio, no video. Even encoding with H.264 got me a .mov file extension, Windows recognizes it.


Edit: I have settled for MPEG-4, the recipient of the film wont bother going through all of this!

 

[Davesrose]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AuroraProject /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have installed a codec pack, no change, still just getting audio, no video. Even encoding with H.264 got me a .mov file extension, Windows recognizes it.

Since it's blank that should be an indication that there's an incompatibility with the video codec. Again, I have found that sorenson is the most universal quicktime format. And I render out animations for a living.....so this is professional experience with working cross platform. BTW, really old PCs might also have a problem with sorenson 3.....so sorenson is as basic as one can get to have a compressed format that works across the board.

 

[AuroraProject]

Alright, I'm trying that now.

 

[AuroraProject]

Hey, Sorenson 3 looks better than MPEG-4 and it takes up less space! The original H.264 file is 1.2gb, MPEG-4 is 300mb, Sorenson 3 is 200mb! Can I keep this quality level and get the file any smaller?