Panasonic Viera St50 series media viewer.. inabilty to play some MP4 files

[idreos]

I recently purchased a large screen HDTV which is capable of playing video files from an sd card or usb drive on a built in media player. As a video editing enthusiast I was looking forward to viewing my videos on the Panasonic TV’s large 60” screen.
The media player was able to flawlessly play mpg2 video files created using Pinnacle S12 that I fed it via usb and sd devices


However the TV cannot display any of the mp4 720p movies I created on S12. There are other non S12 MP4 720p files it plays flawlessly so I decided to check the codecs using VLC player's codec information feature to compare any possible codec differences between mp4’s that could play on the Panasonic TV’s media player and those that could not.


This is what I found
MP4 videos that were able to play on the tv had the following codec displayed:
H264-Mpeg-4 AVC (part 10) (AVC1)

MP4 videos that could not play (those created on S12) had this codec:
MPEG-4 video (mp4v)


Can someone familiar with codecs offer an opinion on the differences between those 2 mp4 codecs and why S12 created mp4 movies could not be played while other non s12 created mp4’s could??
Thanks for your input in helping me solve this problem


Jim

[aedipuss]

use mediainfo on the files, it will give usable info to tell you what the problem may be. you can put it in text mode and copy/paste the results here.

[idreos]

thanks ...here is the report for the mp4 file that will not play on the viera media server

General
Complete name : E:\My Videos\2012 Videos\Alec & Hillary Wedding.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID : mp42
File size : 160 MiB
Duration : 4mn 8s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 5 409 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2012-08-27 01:07:27
Tagged date : UTC 2012-08-27 01:07:27

Video
ID : 1
Format : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile : Simple@L3
Format settings, BVOP : No
Format settings, QPel : No
Format settings, GMC : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix : Default (H.263)
Codec ID : 20
Duration : 4mn 8s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 5 216 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 11.1 Mbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Variable
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Minimum frame rate : 29.940 fps
Maximum frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.189
Stream size : 155 MiB (96%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2012-08-27 01:07:27
Tagged date : UTC 2012-08-27 01:07:27

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : LC
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 4mn 8s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 188 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 194 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 5.56 MiB (3%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2012-08-27 01:07:27
Tagged date : UTC 2012-08-27 01:07:27

[Baldrick]

Post the details from one 720p mp4 that works also.

[jman98]

Your file that doesn't play is basically a Divx or Xvid video plus AAC audio. That's a somewhat weird combination for an MP4 container. Perhaps the player doesn't expect that. You might try demuxing the video and audio and saving it as MKV format instead. But then again based on what little documentation I could find, I cannot say with any certainty that your TV supports Divx/Xvid (this is the H.263 reference) video.

Please note that consumers just assume that "TV media player" means "It plays everything!" when in fact it often means "I have to convert almost everything to get the stupid player to play it". TV media players are pretty infamous for their fussiness and refusal to play specific common video and audio types. Dedicated media players like by Western Digital and other manufacturers have a much wider set of video and audio types that they support than TVs do. That is just how it is. Your MP4 file should play fine on a Western Digital media player.

[aedipuss]

just a guess but it might not like the variable frame rate, that may work on apple i things but not much else.

[davexnet]

Why would he have to buy this software, when there are plenty of free solutions ?