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  1. I now have 3 music videos from iTunes which, despite being unprotected, will not play on my WD media player. This seems to be the video codec - AVC (Baseline@L3.0).

    I have other videos using AVC (Baseline@L2.1) that work fine.

    What free software will re-encode with a different codec of my choice?

    Thanks guys.
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  2. Member hech54's Avatar
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    WinFF is my "go to" software for such things.
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  3. VH Wanderer Ai Haibara's Avatar
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    Are you sure the three videos are unprotected? I'd always had the impression that any video offered in the iTunes Music Store was protected, by default. Do they have the .m4p extension?

    I thought I remembered reading, somewhere on this forum, about people 'tricking' players complaining about AVC profiles by hex-editing header information (in an MKV, though) to make it appear as though the video was using an earlier profile, and that worked. I think there's even a utility for it in the Tools section (but again, for MKVs... I don't know if it would work for MP4s.) But, yeah, if you don't mind the quality hit, I'd most likely just re-encode.
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  4. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by ai haibara
    Are you sure the three videos are unprotected?
    Itunes does offer some free videos. They have a free mythbusters episode (christmas clip show). I think there are other free videos as well but I don't know which ones.

    Assuming the free videos are unprotected then converting with a regular program that accepts mp4 shouldn't be a problem. Yes some quality loss is to be expected depending on the destination codec and the bitrate used.

    A good alternative to that if they are protected and purchased of course is to use tunebite or a similar program. It will play the video and record it while its playing. However it is payware not freeware but it does work. Again it won't be a perfect copy but it can look very good depending on your codec and bitrate used.
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  5. Thanks Hech54, it works a treat. I restricted the baseline to 2.1 as I know the WD player accepts that. Quality appears ok.

    Ai Haibara, yes they are definitely unprotected. My Android phone plays them, but the WD media player won't. I think it's time WD issue some firmware updates.

    Yoda313, tunebite is only as good as their PC running it, as I've found to my cost. It's fine for converting protected audio, but for video it's a waste of money for me...
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  6. VH Wanderer Ai Haibara's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by yoda313 View Post
    Itunes does offer some free videos. They have a free mythbusters episode (christmas clip show). I think there are other free videos as well but I don't know which ones.
    I know they offer free videos, but I'd heard that all the video offered on the iTMS was still DRM-protected. Of course, I haven't tried to convert any videos from the iTMS (I haven't downloaded any, but my sister does get the occasional video), so I wouldn't know for sure.

    I still wonder if there's an easy way to make the players think the AVC profile in an MP4 is different without re-encoding, and incurring that quality hit.

    Edit: Joolz2020, what video codec would you prefer to output to? It might be worth it to try Handbrake to output a new MP4, though I can't recall if it allows you to specify the profile level.
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