[art_director]

I have a Quicktime video I'm trying to share with a Windows user. The person I would like to send it to is not allowed to download the Quicktime player to his machine so I'm trying to convert the file for his viewing.

Will an MPEG4 file do the trick?

I have Quicktime Pro and After Effects at my disposal.

Thanks.

[Nap]

You will probably have the best chance of the other party being able to read your files if you use mpeg-1 format, as WMP (usually the default viewer on a PC) will read that format with just a standard Windows installation. In OS X ffmpegX will make mpeg-1 files.
Another posibility is an avi file, which QT Pro can export. Only problem is that if you are using OS X then Cinepak is about the only compressor included and it is not very high quality. If you are running OS 9 or earlier you can download Indeo codecs from the Apple Quicktime site. Those have never been ported to OS X.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30506

MIcroSoft seems to be avoiding mpeg-4 streams so the chances you friend can read it are slim. I am sure there are or will be some Players for Windows that will handle them but it is a little early in the game for those to be widely available.

[art_director]

Thanks for the reply, Nap.

[dtriska]

Originally posted by Nap:
MIcroSoft seems to be avoiding mpeg-4 streams so the chances you friend can read it are slim. I am sure there are or will be some Players for Windows that will handle them but it is a little early in the game for those to be widely available.

Microsoft has been playing around with MPEG-4 for years and years. Where do you think DivX came from?

Use 3ivx to create a .mp4 file. WMP shouldn't have a problem playing that as it's a standard MPEG-4 file. If anything, RealPlayer should be able to read it as well.

[Uncle Skeleton]

MS used to base their proprietary Window Media codecs on the preliminary specs of MPEG-4 bitstreams purely for buzzword compliance (they no longer do). The MPEG-4 file format on the other hand was never addressed by MS, and no default installation of Windows will be able to play MPEG-4 files without first installing either 3ivx, MPlayer, VLC or Real Player (there are probably some more obscure options too)

[grobbins]

You can convert to RealVideo for playback in RealPlayer using the free QuickTime export component available at http://www.realnetworks.com/products/realexport/