Problems viewing "mov" dv file on anything but Mac

[ozymango]

I'm not sure if this should be posted in the dv forum, the capture forum, the conversion forum, or the ffmpegx forum, so here's hoping I'm close.

I helped a friend with a video "problem" that I "solved" but only through a whole bunch of conversion -- he had three DVD discs of footage of his band, videotaped on a DV camcorder by somebody else and then transferred to "mov" files on a Mac (don't know what kind of Mac, what software, anything, just that this was done on a Mac), where it was then burned to DVD discs (not MPEG-2 DVD, just copied straight as files to a DVD disc). There were three clips, 10-20 minutes each, ranging from 2 to 4gb, in "mov" format (which I know is just a container) and these clips are theoretically plain DV footage run through Quicktime (as far as I know, and he knows).

The orginal videographer is miles away and we can't contact him, so we don't know what equipment/codecs he used, but these mov files would play back only on Quicktime on a Mac computer. You can read the discs on a PC , but when you try to play the files (from the DVD) or transfer them to a computer, they won't play back on a PC running Quicktime (latest version), you just get the error message "Quicktime is unable to play this file."

We didn't have a full version of Quicktime (to allow file export) so we tried running ffmpegx on the Mac to see if it could read the files, and it could -- but it said the files were mpg files in PAL format! Which we knew was not the case. Or we figured it couldn't be the case. Could it?

Anyway, we ran them through ffmpeg and were able to get video out but no sound, and the videos were indeed in PAL format. But again no sound so we couldn't do anything with them.

Finally we broke down and purchased a license for Quicktime pro for the Mac (fortunately it's pretty cheap) and hoped and prayed we could extract the footage and, lo and behold, we were able to export these as AVI files on the Mac, which we then copied to DVD and were able to view them on a PC. Yay!

BUT -- for some reason the footage would play through fine if you just viewed it on Media Player or Virtual Dub, but you couldn't fast forward, rewind, or go directly to any other point of the file, it just "snapped" back to the beginning. Also Virtual Dub reported some invalid index stuff and had to rebuild the footage.

So it was viewable but only sort of, and on a hunch I tried opening the files in Tmpgenc, and it was able to open the files. So then I tried exporting the .avi files into new avi files, using a plain DV codec (Panasonic). And Tmpgenc did it's business and didn't crash and I finally ended up with avi files that then were viewable (and fast-forward-able) in Vdub and MediaPlayer and everything else I tried. Yay!

Although of course this is now like a 2.5 generation copy of an original so I'm sure the quality must be suffering somewhere, although viewed both on a computer and TV monitor you can't tell, and the sound is great (which is really most critical part, as this was shot in a dark bar and the picture ain't that great to begin with). But it took bloody forever to get this far and I'm just curious as to whether anybody knows if Mac Quicktime versus PC Quicktime (same versions, 6.5.2) use different codecs based on the OS and/or any other theories as to just what the heck happened to the original file.

[seehontung]

I'm curious as I've had a similar problem but have not had the success that you had in even viewing the files. A friend with a canon ZR60 recorded some vids of our ski trip, transferred onto his Mac via iVideo and then burnt onto a DVD-R for me to view.

The files have no .avi or .mov container and was unreadable by any player or codec that I could find. The only time it was playable was via mplayer on another friend's linux box and he was able to grab the info below. It looks like it's rawDV but i can't tell if it's a problem of coming from a Mac or what?

Am completely stumped and frustrated. Anyone have a suggestion?


Clip info:
Playing clip.avi
AVI: Missing video stream!? Contact the author, it may be a bug
RAWDV file format detected.
================================================== ========================
Opening audio decoder: [libdv] Raw DV Audio Decoder
AUDIO: 32000 Hz, 2 ch, 16 bit (0x10), ratio: 3596399->128000 (28771.2 kbit)
Selected audio codec: [libdv] afm:libdv (raw DV audio decoder (libdv))
================================================== ========================
Xlib: extension "XFree86-VidModeExtension" missing on display
"localhost:10.0".
vo: X11 running at 3840x1024 with depth 24 and 32 bpp (":10.0" => remote
display)
Xlib: extension "XVideo" missing on display "localhost:10.0".
Sorry, Xv not supported by this X11 version/driver
******** Try with -vo x11 or -vo sdl *********
================================================== ========================
Requested video codec family [qdv] (vfm=dshow) not available (enable it at
compilation)
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffdv] vfm:ffmpeg (FFmpeg DV decoder)
================================================== ========================
Checking audio filter chain for 32000Hz/2ch/16bit -> 32000Hz/2ch/16bit...
AF_pre: af format: 2 bps, 2 ch, 32000 hz, little endian signed int
AF_pre: 32000Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian)
AO: [oss] 32000Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian) (2 bps)
Building audio filter chain for 32000Hz/2ch/16bit -> 32000Hz/2ch/16bit...
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred csp: Planar 411P)
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vop scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
VDec: using Planar 411P as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 1 -> 4
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 5 -> 4
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 1 -> 1
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 1 -> 1

SwScaler: BICUBIC scaler, from Planar 411P to BGR 32-bit using MMX2
VO: [x11] 720x480 => 720x480 BGR 32-bit
Shared memory not supported
Reverting to normal Xlib
New_Face failed. Maybe the font path is wrong.
Please supply the text font file (~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf).
subtitle font: load_sub_face failed.
A: 1.3 V: 1.2 A-V: 0.033 ct: 0.127 38/ 38 72% 729% 21.5% 2 0 0%%