To John 1701-a

did you check that you have the proper codec?

I'll check when i get home later from my Mac, see if i can offer any advice. If you're still using quicktime by default, I've found that VLC handles more video formats a lot better than quicktime does.

 

I've met John. Heck, I've sat in a bar and DRANK with John. :thumb:

He's totally awesome.

 

I just tried a few of his videos on my mac... None of them would play in quicktime without downloading new codecs, but they worked just fine in VLC.

 

Hello.

It's been a scramble to enjoy the last moments of summer, document all I can about my PHV experiences, and finally deliver a User-Guide for the 2010.

In the meantime, I just got a Droid and have been using to to figure out how to make the website look good on wireless handheld devices. Video presentation, of course, is the biggest challenge.

That mp4 codec was the most universally supported of the time. Now, there's probably something better, but I haven't figured out what yet. I also haven't hunted down the original source to some of the files to reconvert them. A few are on VHS!

Any suggestions on a better video file-format?
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Download the video and play it using the program VLC.

OP: are you familiar with the private message (PM) feature ?

 

John - I'd go with H.264 for video these days. It's supported by Android, Blackberry, and iOS devices, and has full support on Mac's and PC's. It's also the default format for iTunes, which is one of, if not THE most widely distributed media content management system in the world.

I've got a program at home on my Mac called Handbrake that can, among other things, transcode video extremely quickly (faster than realtime). It should be able to read in your existing mp4 videos and spit out H.264 without any problem, and can be easily set up to process a queue so you don't even have to be there while its working. I'll take a few of your videos when i get home and see how they look... If the quality is acceptable, it'll save you a ton of time over ripping them from VHS again

 

Handbrake also lets you set up templates for different encoding parameters, so that taking a bunch of full screen mp4 movies and changing them into phone screen sized movies is a snap.

h.264 is a smaller filesize than mpeg-4 all else equal, but I am not sure which format requires more cpu to run smoothly. I do know that h.264 ran fine on the early iphones.

Apple has always been pissy about not bundling native mpeg-4 playback through itunes -- don't ask me why. The better generic cross-platform choice is mpeg-2.

 

What's your reasoning for mpeg-2, other than it being around since the mid 90's? I've done my research on H.264... it's compatible with all the major smart phones, iTunes, Quicktime, Windows Media Player, and a huge host of other 3rd party players across multiple OS's. There's an open source implementation that's widely available for Linux based systems. It provides better compression with increased quality than mpeg-2. AND it's included in the blue-ray standard.

I do not know. I just don't see the benefit of going with mpeg-2... unless you want to be backwards compatible with windows 98

 

I wasn't clear, I meant I would choose mpeg-2 over mpeg-4 for wide compatibility. h.264 is fine if lower-end phones can handle it -- I just do not know.

 

Just do flash video. There won't be a need to download.

Better yet, put it on YouTube. It can do HD now.

 

I do some video authoring for my work, and have produced some animations for portfolios on phones. I've noticed most will play h.264/AVC encoded mpeg-4 with a mp4 extension (and on Macs and PCs, the .mp4 extension usually defaults to itunes). Versions of h.264 are found in all current media (be it youtube, HD players, cable on demand, even Microsoft Silverlight apps like Netflix).

Apple does have a different container then windows media player. MP4 (AVC/h.264) can be encoded within a mp4, mov, wmv, mkv, m2ts, etc file: they all just have different specs and compression. I just use off the shelf converters for exporting to phones or hand helds(usually keep the ipod/iphone profile and it exports to mp4). For PCs, I prefer wmv over mov because the compression seems better. Although one is more likely to have quicktime installed on a PC vs windows media player for the Mac...so for websites, I grin and bear authoring in Quicktime (anecdotely I usually find that Sorenson does a better job then Apple's use of MP4).

To get an example of the different profiles within AVC/h.264, here's a list of features for some popular encoders:

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Give this newest video a try...

John's Stuff - Toyota Prius Video Files - PHV First Commute

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