Is it possible to view videos on a camera?

[YeshyyyK]

Is it possible to convert a video(or just directly) and then put it onto an SD card, and watch the video on a (Canon) camera?

[smrpix]

Generally not.
The videos have to conform not only to the audio/video codecs of the native camera files (relatively easy) but the metadata, spanning specs and folder structure must all align as well.

edit: reading aedipuss' post below I agree, DSLRs give you abetter shot at it than dedicated camcorders.

[aedipuss]

most likely depends on the camera. all the recent eos dslr cameras record and play back video. there's no reason you can't put a video onto one of their cards and play it as long as it's in a close enough format to what they record.

which specific camera are you asking about?

[flashandpan007]

Why use a camcorder/DSLR? Why not a smartphone with a slightly bigger screen which also can be connected to a TV with HDMI? Just a thought ...

[YeshyyyK]

most likely depends on the camera. all the recent eos dslr cameras record and play back video. there's no reason you can't put a video onto one of their cards and play it as long as it's in a close enough format to what they record.

which specific camera are you asking about?

A point and shoot Canon Powershot SD780

[KarMa]

For starters the audio it records in is most likely PCM, at least that is how my 5 other Canons seem to be. So when playing these videos back it only decodes PCM (mono for me) and has no need to decode MP3/AAC/DTS/whatever. Also your camera only seems to record up to 720p@30fps, so staying close to this would be good. If you can take a video you recorded with you camera and post the mediainfo of it (text form) that would be helpful, as that will tell you what profiles to use too. I don't see any reason why Canon would purposefully stop you from using their products outside of normal use, just have to give the decoder what it can handle. Last thing Canon wants are people returning items because the video they shot does not play on the device.

Another thing is that it probably saves your files in .MOV, which I'm not really sure how to mux into besides using ffmpeg.

[YeshyyyK]

Another thing is that it probably saves your files in .MOV, which I'm not really sure how to mux into besides using ffmpeg.

Are there any converters for this? I've played around with Handbrake, but it can I think it can only convert the camera files to another format, not to it. Tencoder seems to work for .MOV, but I'm not sure what to use as the Codecs....


I've attached the text files exported from MediaInfo, one with the 720p30fps and the other at 240p30fps. There's also 640*480 @ 30fps, but I don't have any videos with that setting....

[KarMa]

I'll play around with my cameras to see if it can work. Never thought of doing this.

[SameSelf]

Don't most P&S Canons record in AVCHD to a Quicktime container (*.mov)? At least, that is what mine did, back in the day, as 640x480 square pixel. So, the easy thing would be to record a video with the camera, then using Mediainfo, see what exactly the specs are, and transcode your video to match those specs. The main limiting factors will likely be aspect ratio, e.g. 1280x720 but not 1920x1080, bitrate, and profile. I am not sure how customizable Handbrake is as I never use it. But if you post a Mediainfo of the camera video, I am sure someone here can point you in the exact direction on how to transcode your video to precisely match the Canon video.

[KarMa]

Surprisingly I'm not having any luck after more than an hour. Just shows a big question mark over my test videos. I think I did a pretty good job of mimicking the videos it produces, like resolution/profile/GOP size/FPS/PCM MONO. The only possible problem I can see it that when muxing from MKV to MOV with FFMPEG, the new MOV is showing it as a slight variable frame rate with Mediainfo. Then there's the part that smrpix was talking about in post #2 with metainfo that I'm not sure how to copy.

This is pretty much a waste of time as there are plenty of good alternatives, like a cell phone which can usually support better compressed video/audio.

[poisondeathray]

Surprisingly I'm not having any luck after more than an hour. Just shows a big question mark over my test videos. I think I did a pretty good job of mimicking the videos it produces, like resolution/profile/GOP size/FPS/PCM MONO. The only possible problem I can see it that when muxing from MKV to MOV with FFMPEG, the new MOV is showing it as a slight variable frame rate with Mediainfo. Then there's the part that smrpix was talking about in post #2 with metainfo that I'm not sure how to copy.

you can use --force-cfr with x264 , or use ffmpeg libx264 with -x264opts force-cfr

Do you have the same camera ? do you want to test this attached vid below for playback ? The colors are off because ffmpeg actually converts the range (libx264 x264opts doesn't have all the commands available as x264, but it's just a playback test)

There are other flags and data not shown by mediainfo, so an actual video sample would help if this doesn't playback

Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : QuickTime
Codec ID                                 : qt   0000.02 (qt  )
File size                                : 5.17 MiB
Duration                                 : 10 s 34 ms
Overall bit rate                         : 4 325 kb/s
Writing application                      : Lavf57.3.100

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : Baseline@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC                   : No
Format settings, ReFrames                : 1 frame
Format settings, GOP                     : M=1, N=15
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 10 s 34 ms
Bit rate                                 : 3 616 kb/s
Nominal bit rate                         : 23.0 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
Height                                   : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 30.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.131
Stream size                              : 4.33 MiB (84%)
Writing library                          : x264 core 148 r2597 e86f3a1
Encoding settings                        : cabac=0 / ref=1 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x1:0x111 / me=hex / subme=7 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=0 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=2 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=0 / weightp=0 / keyint=15 / keyint_min=1 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=30 / rc=abr / mbtree=1 / bitrate=23000 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=4 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / vbv_maxrate=24000 / vbv_bufsize=24000 / nal_hrd=none / filler=0 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language                                 : English
Color range                              : Full
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.601

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings, Endianness              : Little
Format settings, Sign                    : Signed
Codec ID                                 : sowt
Duration                                 : 10 s 34 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 705.6 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 1 channel
Channel positions                        : Front: C
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 kHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 864 KiB (16%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Alternate group                          : 1

This is pretty much a waste of time as there are plenty of good alternatives, like a cell phone which can usually support better compressed video/audio.

yes!

[KarMa]

Do you have the same camera ? !

No I just have a handful of different Canon point and shoot cameras made over the past decade. Two of which support H.264 video capture (one 720p30 max and the other 1080p24 max)

I tested out your sample .MOV, and still no go. My 1080p24 camera (also supports 720p30) still shows a ? thumbnail, and my 720p30 camera does not even show it but just skips over it. As far as FFMPEG goes, I was encoding with x264 via Megui into an MKV which I then used FFMPEG to remux into an .MOV. Also I have to rename the video to something like MVI_0399.MOV for it to even attempt to look at it.

My sample test

General
Complete name                            : G:\DCIM\121___05\
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : QuickTime
Codec ID                                 : qt   0000.02 (qt  )
File size                                : 8.49 MiB
Duration                                 : 36 s 722 ms
Overall bit rate                         : 1 938 kb/s
Writing application                      : Lavf57.41.100

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : Baseline@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC                   : No
Format settings, ReFrames                : 1 frame
Format settings, GOP                     : M=1, N=15
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 36 s 703 ms
Bit rate                                 : 1 166 kb/s
Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
Height                                   : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Minimum frame rate                       : 29.412 FPS
Maximum frame rate                       : 30.303 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.042
Stream size                              : 5.10 MiB (60%)
Writing library                          : x264 core 148 r2721 72d53ab
Encoding settings                        : cabac=0 / ref=1 / deblock=1:-1:-1 / analyse=0x1:0x131 / me=umh / subme=10 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=0 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=9 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=0 / weightp=0 / keyint=15 / keyint_min=8 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=37 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=20.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / vbv_maxrate=50000 / vbv_bufsize=62500 / crf_max=0.0 / nal_hrd=none / filler=0 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language                                 : English

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings, Endianness              : Little
Format settings, Sign                    : Signed
Codec ID                                 : sowt
Duration                                 : 36 s 722 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 768 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 1 channel
Channel positions                        : Front: C
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 3.36 MiB (40%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Alternate group                          : 1

[KarMa]

Do you have the same camera ?

Ok so it turns out I do have a Canon PowerShot SD780IS. I don't know my camera models by heart so I just assumed I didn't.

There are other flags and data not shown by mediainfo, so an actual video sample would help if this doesn't playback

I created samples from my two cameras for you. Only after I created the samples and looked up my cameras did I realize I had the same camera. So there are two different samples.

[poisondeathray]

Only after I created the samples and looked up my cameras did I realize I had the same camera.

funny

A few things didn't match the actual video sample, this other one matches most of them, at least in terms of encoding. But there are many apple specific atoms in the mov container that open source software cannot reproduce reliably. I suspect it's going to be difficult to get it working. Apple QT is a thought, but since QT software encoder doesn't give you enough fine control over encoding settings, they stray very far from the camera's HW encoder

[awgie]

Just stumbled across this thread whist looking for something else entirely.

And the thought occurs to me that even if you can mimic exactly all of the video settings of the camera, the camera may still never see your imported file as a playable video if it is not present in the camera's "library". No, I don't have a Canon, but my video camera creates and maintains its own internal library on the storage media. If I manually remove a video from the drive, the camera still shows a thumbnail for that video, but without a picture, and if I try to play that thumbnail, I get a "file missing" error. I've never actually tried to upload a video TO the camera.

I'd have to echo the sentiment of flashandpan007 and KarMa and suggest just using a smartphone. Most current smartphones now enable you to wirelessly cast to another device, like a TV, in addition to being able to connect via an HDMI adapter and cable. iPhones are a little finicky, but most Android phones also allow you to connect an external storage device. Mine will even mount my 1TB portable hard drives, giving me full access to my entire video library.

[KarMa]

@poisondeathray
That out2b.mov never worked either. Even though I changed the naming to conform with the names, given to videos taken on these cameras.

@awgie
I know I can look at pictures on one camera, of pictures from another camera. Video seems to be a no go. The only possible video that might work is if I recorded 720p H.264 on one camera, and try to play it on the one that supports both 720p and 1080p.

These cameras also don't know what to do with JPEGs that have been losslessly rotated by me in Windows. They just pop up a ? over the rotated images.