QuickTime Export Problems

[dickson]

I've been having some problems loading up certain .mov files in avisynth so as a solution, I'm using QuickTime to create a raw avi format intermediate file. The problem is even after export, some of the avi's can't be loaded using avisynth or other media players. Does anyone have any clue why this is happening or how to fix it? I'm open to using any program as long as it has command line support. (I've already tried ffmpeg).

Thanks

[Cornucopia]

More info, please...(specifically source, intermediate, and expected final specs)

[dickson]

The problem is I can't figure out in what scenarios the intermediate avi will fail to load. I've had .mov files that were plain mpeg-4 video load up properly in avisynth but after converting to avi, I'm unable to load up the avi. When I try to open it with VLC Player, it says the avi won't support seeking and it will have to repair by creating some index. In other cases, I've had .mov files that couldn't be loaded in avisynth (some videos were mpeg-4, others H.263 etc.) but after converting to avi, I was able to load the intermediate file.

The settings I used to create the intermediate in QuickTime is "Raw Video, Millions of Colors+, and raw audio, 2 Channels 44.1 KHZ). I don't think we need to worry about the final output as all I want to do is get the avi to play - in any media player or avisynth.

I've read some forum posts alluding to a corrupt export: http://www.lafcpug.org/phorum/read.php?4,165711,166893 where every few seconds, QuickTime will insert a duplicate frame. I've tried exporting the source to various formats including avi, mpg4 and dv but still encountered the same problem. If there is a bug, then it isn't isolated to just the avi export.

[dickson]

Okay I figured out that using "AviSource" as opposed to DIrectShowSource will load the problematic files. Still be good to know what QuickTime did....

[Cornucopia]

I've never heard of Quicktime "inserting duplicate frames", but I could believe it is possible, given complicated VBR Long-GOP material. If you've got h.264/MP4-SP/h.263 material already in QT (and it plays ok there), you should be able to re-wrap it (losslessly) to MP4 and then use other MP4 tools to demux to raw elementary streams, or convert to AVI, etc. that might have a better time with that material.

BTW, I'm assuming when you say "RAW" video and audio, you mean UNCOMPRESSED (aka "None" in QT parlance). Otherwise, you might be using the wrong codec.

Let us know further how it goes...

Scott

[dickson]

Thanks for your help. Yes, when I say RAW I mean uncompressed. I seem to have solved the problem with loading the video but now the quicktime export seems unrealistically slow :/ I'm using QuickTime 7.1.5 on windows. It's fast if i export using the QuickTime GUI, but if I develop against the API and try to export, it becomes very slow (yet sometimes fast - haven't been able to figure out why/when). But thats probably more a developer issue and not meant for this forum...

[Cornucopia]

QT is, in almost ALL cases, slower than others in exporting (true conversion exporting). It can be much faster if you're going MOV->MP4 where the codecs were MP4/h.264 and AAC to begin with. That's the "lossless transcoding", which QT calls "PASSTHROUGH". This is just a re-wrap & file copy/save, so much faster.

QT 7 is better than 6 WRT speed. Don't know about exporting via QTAlt/Directshow...

Glad things are better,
Scott

[Soopafresh]

Have you tried the QTinput.dll plugin for AviSynth ? It works quite well, but read the thread as there are quite a few parameters to set.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=104293

Also try Rawsource

http://avisynth.org/warpenterprises/files/rawsource_25_dll_20060728.zip

[dickson]

Thanks for your suggestions. I've tried them all but unfortunately I haven't had too much success. I have narrowed down the problem a little bit. The problematic avi files are the ones when I export using the Indeo 4.4 codec. The codec is properly installed and I even ran the avi file through graphedit to verify the proper decompressor. Any clue on what might be so different about QuickTime's export to Indeo 4.4?

[Cornucopia]

Would you be clearer, more precise and EXHAUSTIVE in you explanation of all the steps (and settings) you're taking now? I've gotten confused about why you'd NOW be exporting to Indeo...

Scott

[dickson]

Sorry if I wasn't clear.

Because I've been having problems opening quicktime files in avisynth, I've decided to create an intermediate file by using the QuickTime sdk to export to avi. When you export to avi, there are many settings you can choose including the codec. I've tried uncompressed and while that guaranteed a working avi file, the file was just way too large. So instead, I've chosen to export to avi with Indeo 4.4 Compression (highest quality setting and Quick Compress option is turned off). The problem is that some indeo-avi files aren't playable in any players except for quicktime and may not always load in avisynth either. I can't seem to narrow down the the issue...

My avisynth script does nothing fancy. Just loads up the video using DirectShowSource() or AviSource() (will try the other if one fails).

[Cornucopia]

Ugghh!
Indeo is a terrible codec, quality-wise, and an inefficient codec size-wise.

If you're going to go QT-->AVI-->something else, and you don't want to go uncompressed route (which would retain the most quality at the expense of huge sizes), AT LEAST go the DV codec route. QT has a DV-NTSC codec for MOV files and the same codec for AVI files. Plus, being DV, it is in effect IDENTICAL to a standard Windows-made DV-AVI (type2) file. DV will be nearly as good as uncompressed, but ~1/5 the size. And since it's all Keyframes, and the audio is LPCM, you shouldn't have framedrop problems. That's why DV is the industry standard that it is.
If that's still too large for you, I'd say get a bigger harddrive...

Scott

[dickson]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into it.

Yes Indeo 4.4 does suck. At the very least, they should add support for Indeo 5!

[Cornucopia]

They do, on old Macs and on Windows (I have the codecs DL'd). I believe QT creators specifically don't want to support it on OSX.

Scott