Standalone players and mp4/mov?

[mhar4]

I know these issues have been covered to a certain extent, but I'm wondering if list members have experiences of trying to get these newer "DivX" enabled standalone DVD players to play movs or mp4s created on a Mac. Often the specifications of these things will list "MPEG4", but there's very little information about file containers. I have a lot of stuff as Quicktime movs, and I have fallen into the market for a new unit, so was wondering if the MPEG4 functionality was worth it.

[Case]

AFAIK the "MPEG-4 players" only do [DivX, XviD] AVIs. I expect that .mp4 "H.264" will be the next thing to support, after QuickTime 7 comes out.

[mhar4]

That's pretty lame. So that means converting movs and mp4s to avis.

[sjk]

"MPEG-4 compatibility" means too many things in the consumer video player market. It's especially confusing when it's listed in addition to DivX and XviD.

[AntnyMD]

As long as you made your mp4's and mov's with divx, xvid or 3ivx video content, you can passthrough the video, convert the audio to mp3 and have it wrapped in an avi container very easily and quickly with D-Vision 2 (no other version but 2).

[mhar4]

As long as you made your mp4's and mov's with divx, xvid or 3ivx video content, you can passthrough the video, convert the audio to mp3 and have it wrapped in an avi container very easily and quickly with D-Vision 2 (no other version but 2).

Thanks for this tip. Actually, I had tried this a while ago, but the resultant avis had no audio. But just now I remembered the need to "doctor" avis so they would play under Quicktime.

So maybe if you want to do the steps, these "DivX" players might be useful from time to time.

[AntnyMD]

Actually, I had tried this a while ago, but the resultant avis had no audio. But just now I remembered the need to "doctor" avis so they would play under Quicktime.

From your original post, your goal was to play avi on a settop. If you want compatibility on your Mac *and* your settop, just install VLC and associate all files with the extension avi to VLC. Cross-compatibility "problem" solved.

[mhar4]

And the new version of MPEG Streamclip, 1.3, generates AVIs straight out of the box. Terrific.

[lordsmurf]

XBOX's XMBC will play MOV. I just watched all the BMW films a couple days back, solid QuickTime MOV files.

[mhar4]

So I got one of these "MPEG4" DVD players, a Yamada MX-105, and it's pretty neat. Multizone, optical digital audio output, etc. As list members suggested, it won't even recognize mp4, despite having the logo on the box, but the D-Vision 2 conversion to AVI trick works fine. Most of my archived video files are movs two-pass encoded with 3ivx, and they look really great from the player on tv. Colour and contrast settings are well matched to DVD playback. The big annoyance is navigation - the player will only allow fast forward, no reverse or skipping ahead.

Ah, there's something called "fixing" avis in D-Vision 3, after which the player has no problem searching back and forth.