Comments on: Apple QuickTime is the worst H.264 codec in the world

By: Fernanda Tornaghi

Fernanda Tornaghi — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 16:23:56 +0000

The H.264 camera codec are highly compressed video codecs designed for capture only and in camera storing. That’s why they are so light! And you can fit about one hour of full resolution HD video in a small 64 GB memory card. They are not designed for playback and especially not for editing. This is way you transcode the material when you ingest it into a editing software, like Final Cut Pro, to Apple Pro Res codec for instance. It has nothing to do to with the Apple H.264 codec. When you finish your edit and output your video to a distribution H.264 1080 mov file, it plays back nicely on any system and software that reads .mov files, such as quicktime or VLC, on any laptop computer. The key concept here is: camera H.264 mov files are not video, they are codes – that you have to decode in order to play or edit. This makes them light, but not playable on consumer systems. They are exchange format files, an intermediate between camera and editing suite, that only the logging software can play in order to log and transfer the material from card to hard drives on set. And you do not drag and drop these files into a software, just because they are .mov files.

Now the consumer counterparts probably come with their manufactures’ software and plugging that do this job. Either that or they have a link for download on their products’ website.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 01:48:29 +0000

I’ve got no love for Apple because of their business practices, have never owned (and will never own) a POS Mac, thanks anyway blowhard John H., but christ you guys are a bunch of whiny apple-haters. iTunes and QuickTime work pretty darn flawlessly on windows, much better than the average Microsoft-backed crap. I submit that crashes and whatever else you’re experiencing are more likely due to head-butting programs and/or the surplus of malware you inadvertently downloaded via all those porn sites.

iTunes is bloated – so what. If you don’t have a friggin’ iPhone, stop worrying about what the cool kids are doing and get over it. If you do have an iPhone, appreciate the better-than-average iTunes interface, get a computer that can handle a 64MB download ffs and then get over it.

As far as QT goes, if you don’t like it, don’t use it! The only thing it’s mandatory for is viewing Apple websites anyway. Since that’s the case, who cares if it has security flaws?! DON’T USE QUICKTIME TO VIEW YOUR PORN. There, problem solved.

\o/

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:54:01 +0000

Hey John how about you disappear with your fact-less fanboyisms

By: john hope

john hope — Sun, 02 May 2010 23:09:45 +0000

The problem is not if Apple is doing good or bad software. The problem is that Windows and pc lost the train of progress. The future is without windows dear sirs. Just give you a present, give you a Mac and all that crap you were used to wil disappear.

By: DWi

DWi — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:05:16 +0000

I’ve read that VLC video quality isn’t as good as Media Player Classic.

Quicktime Alternative v1.8.1, with CoreAVC, FTW.

By: Ben

Ben — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 00:52:47 +0000

You guys should not use quicktime alternative or quicktime.. Ive found VLC to be the best solution for anything video related.. was able to watch 1080p video on an old emachines with an amd athlon xp @ 2.1 xp home sp2 with a geforce 4 mx 4000 128mb pci card and 512 mb ram.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:40:16 +0000

Funny thing is that the H264 (by Adobe) clip WILL be played at a tradeshow on a Mac Mini in Quicktime Player! So even though it plays poorly on my PC (in the same player) I stand firm in my belief it’ll be perfect on the Mac. How bizarre that in ’09 with QT @ v 7.6+, this is still an issue. My suspicions are that Apple could have sorted this out ages ago. Alterior motives?!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:35:58 +0000

Exported from Adobe Media Encoder a high-res (5mb+ ps) clip @ 720p and Quicktime player chokes. My CPU (2.13 ghz dual core / xp sp3 / 4gb RAM) is sitting @ 30% so it’s not even being taxed in the least. Try it in Windows Media Player (I think my CoreAVC kicks in) and less CPU, 1/4 of the RAM usage and plays smoothly. Quicktime on the PC does suck balls but who cares. The reason I’m not on a Mac in the first-place is I get other software to do what I want without being tied into the incentious (sp?) world of all that is Mac. Apple prob implemented it like this for one to say ‘holy crap, my PC’s slow but a Mac handles it well so it MUST be a better, faster coomputer!’. Anyway thanks for article, it backed up my suspicions nicely.

By: artzy65

artzy65 — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:00:40 +0000

Actually, the H.264 compression mode saved my soul when I converted an Apple Keynote ’08 animated presentation on my mac to quicktime and then ran it on my client’s pc laptop under Vista at a trade show. It ran perfectly, as if it was running on my mac.

Explain that if you can.

By: George Ou

George Ou — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:25:32 +0000

http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-102064.html

"mplayer and ffmpeg dont seem to produce valid streams when demuxing

mp4creator –extract=trackidofavcstream input.movseems to work tough

you have to rename the output file to *.264 by hand"

Get it here
http://mp4creator.sourceforge.net/

Yamb works well to extract video. Not sure about audio playback yet.