mp4 sound not supported

[dnix71]

I have an mp4 clip "aac 44100 Hz stereo" that ffmpegX will not play or recode sound for. There are no errors in the log, it just ignores the sound. VLC, MpegStreamclip, Quicktime, RealPlayer, MPlayer OSX Extended have no problem playing it. Xine plays sound with no picture.

I'm using 0.9y on a PPC G4, 10.4.11 with Perian in Quicktime.

Is there anyway to patch the libraries used by ffmpegX from the libraries used by the MPlayer OSX Extended?

VisualHub (no longer supported) also chokes on an flv the same way ffmpegX does. "[flv @ 0x72d500]Unsupported video codec (7)"
But with Perian, QT plays it and the MPlayer OSX Extended and VLC also play it fine.

[Case]

I have an mp4 clip "aac 44100 Hz stereo" that ffmpegX will not play or recode sound for. There are no errors in the log, it just ignores the sound.

Very strange. AAC stereo at most sample rates should be supported.

Is there anyway to patch the libraries used by ffmpegX from the libraries used by the MPlayer OSX Extended?

If you succeed, tell us how you did it...

VisualHub also chokes on an flv the same way ffmpegX does. "[flv @ 0x72d500]Unsupported video codec (7)" But with Perian, QT plays it and the MPlayer OSX Extended and VLC also play it fine.

Tell ffmpegX to use QuickTime for decoding (reading) the source video, by selecting "Decode with Quicktime" in the Options tab (available on ffmpeg and mpeg2enc conversions, but not mencoder conversions). This will invoke Perian, so the video will be supported then. VisualHub has a similar option to utilize QuickTime decoding in Advanced Settings.

[dnix71]

Same error. Trying to encode to MOV mp4.

[flv @ 0x4701fc]Unsupported video codec (7)
Seems that stream 0 comes from film source: 1000.00 (1000/1) -> 29.97 (30000/1001)
Input #0, flv, from '/Users/David/Desktop/untitled.flv':
Duration: 00:53:08.6, bitrate: N/A
Stream #0.0, 29.97 fps(r): Video: 0x0007
Stream #0.1: Audio: 0x000a, 44100 Hz, stereo
Incorrect frame rate

If I try Avi DivX I get:

[flv @ 0x72d500]Unsupported video codec (7)
Cannot find codec matching selected -vo and video format 0x7.

Quicktime says the video is H.264, so does VLC.

[rumplestiltskin]

If the video plays properly in QT Player then (assuming you have your QT registered as Pro) export the audio as AIFF and use it for the audio track when you encode. You might also try MPEG Streamclip ans see what it can do with your video.

[dnix71]

I have QT Pro. I converted the flv file to an MOV and it only took about a minute for a 53 minute video, so it must not be difficult to do.

It annoys me, though, that ffmpegX seems to know what the file is and then chokes and annoys me more that MPlayer OSX Extended can play the file, but ffmpegX MPlayer can't. Having a simple mp4 video not play properly is just dumb.

This isn't Major's fault. He just uses open source libraries and puts a GUI on it. That's why I asked if there was a way to patch the libraries.

There is an "additional parameters" line in MPlayer OSX Extended. If I knew the syntax, I could use it to export files in a different format.

Here is MPegStreamclips codec info. It has no trouble with the flv.

Stream: untitled.flv
Path: ~/Desktop/untitled.flv

Duration: 0:53:08
Data Size: 175.44 MB
Bit Rate: 0.46 Mbps

Video Tracks:
H.264, 640 × 480, 30.303 fps, 402 kbps

Audio Tracks:
MPEG-4 Audio stereo, 44.1 kHz, 64 kbps

Stream Files:
untitled.flv (175.44 MB)

[rumplestiltskin]

My philosophy is to have a number of tools at the ready and, if one of them chokes on a file, keep trying others until I find one that works.

As you've seen, there's no accounting for how some people find bizarre encoding techniques; perhaps they're trying to impress us with their wizardry. I find these trolls annoying—if all you can do is play it on your computer and not on any media extender or iPod, why bother?—and make a note not to trust anything they make available for DL. Perhaps they'll get the message eventually.

[Case]

Flash player doesn't care for the container format if it recognizes the streams. This might have persuaded some content provider to rename .mp4 to .flv, without it actually being an .flv container file.

Try to reverse it by renaming the .flv to .mp4 and then converting again. Possibly the decoder is confused by detecting data that belongs the the other container format. Simple suffix renaming may be enough to fix it.

[dnix71]

Case, you got me thinking. The file is an mp4. It's the newer H.264 Flash with mp4a. That's why ffmpegX can't play it. I went to ffmpegX home page and looked though the list of improvements.
There has been no upgrade for that type of Flash since version 9 update 3 came out in Dec, 2007. That's why it chokes. VLC, Perian and QT have kept up.

Jan 26, 2008 - ffmpegX 0.0.9y released. What's new in 0.0.9y:

Fixes for Leopard compatibility
Added iPhone preset
Added metadata in FLV encoding (to enable progress indicators in Flash video playback).