Converting strange MP4

[Jeikobu]

I want to convert an MP4 file to an iPod MP4 to play on my iPod, but so far am just having no luck. Even though it's an MP4, MPEG streamclip cannot recognize the video or audio, therefore it won't even open it. Quicktime won't open it and says, "An invalid sample description was found in movie". VLC plays it just fine it seems, but I've never had luck converting using that program, regardless of the file. I tried to move it into iTunes and convert it through that, and it showed the green "plus" symbol like I could add it, but when I dropped it in, nothing happened. I tried ffmpegX and if I try to convert to iPod, its progress window just pops right to finish and, consequently, the file was not converted. I then figured I could try to convert to something else first and then convert that file to iPod, so I tried the first option, AVI. The video seems fine, but the audio is poppy and sounds sped up. When I open it in ffmpegX, the details for the video are:

h264, yuv420p, 640x480

The audio is:

mp2, 48000 Hz, stereo

It's not just this file either. There are many others in a series from the same people that act just like this file, so I highly doubt this is a mistake by the people who made it.

[Baldrick]

try handbrake and avidemux.

[Jeikobu]

HandBrake won't open it.

I checked the Avidemux website, and I noticed in the Mac area it says "QT4/Intel". I imagine "QT4" is "Quicktime 4". However, does Intel mean I have to have an Intel computer to run the program? Mine is a PowerPC G4 Mac.

[pixel zombie]

if you can't play it in quicktime you won't be able to convert, the only exception to that rule is when using Visualhub...try installing Perian and try playing it again in QT or you could post it and i could try converting for you...

[Jeikobu]

I already have Perian, so that hasn't helped it open either. It's 231.3 MB so it's a little big, so I don't think I could post it. However, I'll link you to the file online. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=VZK8Z8MQ

[pixel zombie]

that took forever to d/l...it wouldn't play in QT or mpegstreamclip but i was able to convert it to an mpeg using visualhub

[Jeikobu]

Sorry for the trouble. I really appreciate the help.

The video and audio work fine?

Look like it's no free program. I'm short on money and this is not so important that I need to spend money on it like that. I may just have to find streaming websites and rip from them.

[Case]

The audio in the .mp4 is tagged as Type "mp4a", which I thought was strange for mpeg-1 layer 3 (mp3) audio. Maybe that's why so much software trips over it.

mp4box -info foo.mp4

I used All2MP3 to convert the audio stream to a valid regular mp3 file, as other extraction methods failed. Then I converted that to .aac with CLI ffmpeg 0.6.1 (yesterday's build with MacPorts).

ffmpeg -i foo.mp3 -ab 128000 foo-new.aac

Then I muxed the existing video with the new aac audio.

mp4box -add foo.mp4#trackID=1 -add foo-new.aac#trackID=1 foo-new.mp4

The end result plays well and in sync with QuickTime Player (with Perian).
The video however is labeled as AVC High Profile level 5.1, which is not compatible with iPods (AVC Baseline Profile level 3.0). You would still need conversion for iPod compatibility.

[jamiep]

i just tried with ffmpeg and got it to work fine
this is ffmpeg 0.5 on an intel machine
i have 0.5 possibly on my g5 (which i haven't woken up in about 5 months!)
the command is
ffmpeg -i /path/to/the/problem.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec libfaac -ab 128k -f mov ~/desktop/fixed.mov

basically this is copying the video, recoding the audio to aac and forcing the container to a mov then writing it out to the desktop as "fixed.mov"
it seems to all go ok and took about 1 minute maybe less on my iMac 2.8

if you like i will fire up the G5 and try and replicate it and do you a little applescript app so you just have to drop the file on....
also as these things can be batch scripted i could make one which would do a whole folder in one go if that's any more help.
jamie