Audio Problems

[veganjustice]

I have a movie that is an MPEG-4. which won't play in Quicktime, and won't be accepted by Toast(I am trying to burn it)

Even if I use FFmpegX to encode it differently, the pic will then play in quicktime, but I have no audio.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,


veganjustice

[OmegaSupreme]

What does QT "show movie info" or "show movie properties" say about the file? What error msg do you get?

[veganjustice]

When I try to open it in QT, it says:

ERROR OPENING MOVIE
The Movie could not be opened.

But after I encode it with FFmpegX, it WILL play, but with no audio.

The movie will play in VLC before I encode it with sound and video, but not in QT, but after encoding, there is pic but no audio in both VLC and QT.

[live4ever]

Use VLC to transcode then? Use aiff audio and it should be accepted by Toast.

[rumplestiltskin]

The audio is probably AC3 and you need the decoder. I don't have the link but another poster will probably be helpful very soon. It's a free decoder.

[veganjustice]

live4ever: How do I go about transcoding using VLC, and then changing the audio to Aiff? I have never used VLC to transcode, and I have only changed MP3 songs to Aiff with MP3 - Aiff 2.5. But how can I just take the audio from the movie to change it?

thanks,


veganjustice

[veganjustice]

rumplestitskin: The audio is in aac format. I have the decoder for AC3 though, unless the one I have is the wrong one.


veganjustice

[rumplestiltskin]

rumplestitskin: The audio is in aac format. <snip>
veganjustice

Then your Mac should be able to play it as long as you have QT7 or newer. If it doesn't, then the file's audio isn't standard is some fashion.

Try MPEG Streamclip. If it plays there you might be able to save/export it as something else which Toast might then be able to convert.

[veganjustice]

Yeah, I have the latest version of QT.

I have MPEG Streamclip, and it says the file is not supported.

I am stuck

thanks,


veganjustice

[TugBoat]

Have you tried using ffmpegX by selecting the 'Movie audio to mp3' Preset on the original movie? Make sure the movies extension is .mp4 verses .mov and give it a shot. You might have to rename the audio output from ffmpegX to .mp3, but it usually works. Then all you would have to do is mux the already converted video track with the new mp3 audio track to have a working .avi.

Sometimes QT won't play the .mp4 due to a non-standard AAC audio track, other times it due to the video track being avc1 or x264 instead of h264. It's beginning to look like the old .avi nightmare all over again. Only difference is now they are called .mp4s

[veganjustice]

I haven't tried that yet TugBoat, and I am not sure what I have to do. Can you explain that a little more detailed, step by step? Please?

I would appreciate it.

Thanks,


Veganjustice

[TugBoat]

Well, you never said what the original movie was. Seeing as how it has AAC audio, it's probably labeled as .mov or .mp4. I have found that ffmpegX sometimes has problems with h264 video and AAC audio in a .mov package. It sometimes works better if you rename the .mov to .mp4. So, make sure the original movie is labeled .mp4.

Then drag it onto the ffmpegX icon. Now look at the Summary tab and see what it lists for Video and Audio. BTW, you never said what the actual Video type was... Now in the Quick Preset window, select Movie audio to mp3.

Look at the Audio Hz. They REALLY need to match. Go to the Audio tab and change the Sampling rate to match the original movie, then hit encode. Sometimes the output audio file doesn't have the .mp3 extension, if it doesn't, change it to .mp3.

Now, mux the video only track you already have with this new mp3 and it should work. I like to use D-Vision 3 to mux the tracks, it seems to work better than ffmpegX for me and QT.

[veganjustice]

Alright. I am sorry for not giving all the info. The video was h264, and it was labeled as mp4.

But I'll give it a shot with the audio, and then mux it with the video, and see what happens. I really appreciate the help.
I'll let you know the outcome.


veganjustice

[veganjustice]

TugBoat. IT WORKED!!!! Toast accepted it and everything, and it plays in QT with video and sound. I don't have time to burn it tonight, but this weekend I will, and hopefully it will go over smoothly. I have had some movies be perfect until after they were burnt, and then there was no sound. So I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Thank you, and everyone for the help.

Take care,


veganjustice

[TugBoat]

IT WORKED!!!!

Glad to hear it. Now you have to wonder why the audio didn't work with ffmpegX the first time you used it. I can see some bad times ahead. Even with all the bugs in ffmpegX, if we didn't have it we would be really hurtin'.

I'm running across a lot of MP4s that QT won't open. And if QT won't open it, chances are Toast and MPEG Streamclip won't either seeing as how they use QT. A lot of times the only problem is the audio track. If you could just delete the audio track most likely the h264 video track would play fine in QT and you wouldn't have to re-encode it. But, D-Vision won't touch MOVs or MP4s so trying to strip out the video track won't work. Then, Passthrough in ffmpegX only works with AVIs so trying to save the video track from a MOV or MP4 is again hopeless. Your only option is to re-encode it with ffmpegX. This sucks. And it looks like it's getting worse. And no, I haven't had any luck trying to use VLC to save the video track from one of these screwed up MP4s either.
It sucks I tell ya

[live4ever]

The audio must have been something like HE-AAC (which QT has problems with). Mplayer from the CLI can usually be used along with mp4box to help deal with these files.

[TugBoat]

Hmmm,
Use mPlayer from the terminal or try a DOS program in Windows with another Windows program for a GUI. Doesn't look very promising does it. I hope something else comes along soon. Thanks anyway