M4V display problems

[BillHely]

Hi all.

I have a mentor who sends out streaming video and audio tutorials to his followers from time to time.

Recently he switched to posting his videos in M4V format (he is a Mac user).

To me it is a real PITA. Compared to the WMV format he used to use, M4V is (for me) very slow to load, jerky and the video lags the sound by a considerable amount.

Now I concede that a P450 is getting a bit long in the tooth, but a gig of RAM makes up for a lot of deficiencies. I've been in IT for a long time and I can get the most out of a system without buying a new PC every year. I run XP Pro on this PC and some pretty heavy apps, without a problem.

However, streaming video is not something I know much about. I'm wondering if perhaps there is an optimum codec or player for M4V that might not be installed on a PC by default.

Any suggestions as to how I can improve my experience with M4V?

TIA
- Bill H.

[celtic_druid]

m4v? You mean mp4 (apple use the extension m4v for some strange reason) or you mean real m4v which is according to MPEG-4 specs a raw MPEG-4 part 2 stream. In other words raw video, no audio.

What are you using for playback/decoding?

[BillHely]

m4v? You mean mp4 (apple use the extension m4v for some strange reason) or you mean real m4v which is according to MPEG-4 specs a raw MPEG-4 part 2 stream. In other words raw video, no audio.

What are you using for playback/decoding?

Hi. The extension is definitely M4V.

By default (double-click) the movie (video and sound) comes up in the Quicktime plugin (v7.0.3) in IE6 (fully patched up-to-date).

- Bill H.

[celtic_druid]

Yeah, apple with the ipod video started using .m4v for mp4 files. A stupid move if you ask me since as I said above the extension is already defined by MPEG-4 specs as something else.

Quick Time under windows is far from efficient. You could try say VLC instead. Quicktime is also seriously defficent in terms of MPEG-4 support.

[BillHely]

You could try say VLC instead. Quicktime is also seriously defficent in terms of MPEG-4 support.

THANK YOU!!!

Wow, what a difference. VLC plays each M4V as one would expect. I can now go back and watch the M4V videos that I gave up on becaue it was too painful.

Would you suggest I should use VLC as the default player for all video and audio files?

- Bill H.

[celtic_druid]

Actually I prefer mplayer, but for audio I use foobar2k.