[Diggory Laycock]

Hello,

I'm not really very familiar with using video on the web:

A couple of Questions:

1 - Can Windows Media (on Windows) play MPEG-4 files? or do I have to offer QT and WinMedia?

2 - What's the best way of embedding a movie into a valid XHTML page? I've seen this page:

http://realdev1.realise.com/rossa/re...quicktime.html

Is this the technique that people use?

[Millennium]

WiMP can, in fact, play true MPEG-4 files. It can even play QuickTime files, if you have the right codecs installed (i.e. not Sorenson).

[Diggory Laycock]

Originally posted by Millennium:
WiMP can, in fact, play true MPEG-4 files. It can even play QuickTime files, if you have the right codecs installed (i.e. not Sorenson).

Thanks, Video formats always confuse me.

So let me get this right: ...

MPEG-4 is a wrapper? like AVI and QT?

Apple uses the Sorensen Codec in QT player's MPEG-4 export?

Windows Media can play MPEG-4 files - but Windows does not come with the Sorenson Codec.

Windows Media Player uses the "Window Media Video" codec as standard (which is not available on Mac.)

DivX is an MPEG-4 codec freely available on many OS'es - but is generally only installed by users who d/l a lot of pr0n or tv eps./movies.

Is that right?

So the pragmatic solution is to offer two movies - a Sorenson encoded QT movie and a WMV9 encoded one.

[philzilla]

Originally posted by Diggory Laycock:
So the pragmatic solution is to offer two movies - a Sorenson encoded QT movie and a WMV9 encoded one.

pretty much

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Diggory Laycock:
[B]Thanks, Video formats always confuse me.

So let me get this right: ...

MPEG-4 is a wrapper? like AVI and QT?

Sort of. There are several pieces to MPEG-4. One of them is a wrapper format, like AVI and MOV. There is also half of a codec defined (specifically, the decoder; any encoder can call itself MPEG-4 if you can decode it according to the standard). There are some other definitions as well, but they're not really relevant to this question.

Apple uses the Sorensen Codec in QT player's MPEG-4 export?

Not the same one that they use in "QuickTime" exports. I don't know who makes Apple's MPEG-4 codec. It's possible that Sorenson (the company) makes it, but it's not the same thing as "the Sorenson codec". The distinction is important.

Windows Media can play MPEG-4 files - but Windows does not come with the Sorenson Codec.

It can play MPEG-4 files, because it has the MPEG-4 decoder.

It doesn't have the Sorenson codec, so it cannot play Sorenson files, but Sorenson isn't the same as MPEG-4.

Windows Media Player uses the "Window Media Video" codec as standard (which is not available on Mac.)

That's right, but Windows Media Video isn't MPEG-4 either.

DivX is an MPEG-4 codec freely available on many OS'es - but is generally only installed by users who d/l a lot of pr0n or tv eps./movies.

Is that right?

Mostly; the most recent versions of DivX have broken MPEG-4 decoding somewhat. The DivX team, it seems, is fond of making things that only work by exploiting bugs in WiMP.

There are, however, other true MPEG-4 codecs you could use. The 4.0 version of DivX is true MPEG-4. So are XVID, 3ivX, and Apple's MPEG-4 codec (though Apple's isn't known for being of the best quality). If you use any of these codecs with an MPEG-4 file, they should be playable anywhere.

[Diggory Laycock]

Thanks again Millennium.

Right -
I see - so any proper MPEG-4 decoder should be able to decode any MPEG-4 video (whatever the encoder was.)

The encoder is not relevant -as long as it conforms to the spec.

So, why won't WinMedia Player under Virtual PC play an MPEG-4 file that I have encoded with QT player?



Is it because it only decodes MPEG-4 v1 and v1.1?

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...cdownload.aspx


Does anyone have a real PC they can test the file on?

http://www.diggory.net/grazing/WRC.mp4

[davecom]

Quicktime is pretty well supported on the PC side(A lot of people have it). If you have a mixed network of viewers(significant portion are Mac users), may be okay to just go with QT.

[Diggory Laycock]

OK - I've just gone for a QT movie.

However it appears that you have to wait for the entire movie to load before it will display anything other than the big Q....

http://www.plainsailing.uk.com/staging/sampleFilm.php

Is that normal? Is it because the server does not have Darwin Streaming Server installed?

[Diggory Laycock]

Ah - I was being stupid.

QT .movs can be streamed over http - MP4 files cannot.

I had to save as a QuickTime Movie (using MPEG-4 as the codec).