[glapher]

Strange how apple chooses the .mov format to encode audio in quicktime, I ve captured a few radio talks and I can't find a way to convert them to .m4a....

Even the great xld can't do it...

[Uncle Skeleton]

Did you try iTunes?

[glapher]

I had before and it wouldn't convert it... but now it does...thanks for that... oh boy, how strange is it than when we try what we were doing before somehow it manages to work if someone else suggests it...lol...the strange world of computers...

Still the issue remains in a sense, why are audio recordings saved as movies? Because I d like to add them to itunes but not as movies. Isn't it strange behaviour by apple, that and the fact that it won't allow to specify bit rates is the save as on quicktime, and the save us has only iphone movie format...

[Uncle Skeleton]

.mov isn't "movie" format (despite the name), it's "quicktime" format. It's not too strange that QuickTime Player would use "quicktime" format for everything.

[glapher]

So .mov is an audio/video container that bears not identification as to whether the content is audio or video? I wasn't aware of that, thanks.

Having said that, it really is a poor implementation the voice recording feature. Since itunes is destined to play audio files as per the de facto standards on os x, it makes little sense for this to be in a .mov container. I understand that it's the usual output of quicktime but it doesn't integrate well with the rest of the os, so either the rest of the os and itunes have to change or the quicktime extension. Guess what I think should change, lol.

Also I am disappointed that you cannot set specific bitrates just high and max settings, all this customization exists for itunes, why not quicktime? Because as is you have to, and that's what I am going to do in the future, go with garage band, just for recording a simple line in or soundcard audio from the mac....tstststs...

As an aside may I ask what the difference between .m4v and .mov is (and mp4), not the rudimentary stuff - I am aware of this, but why doesn't apple just do away with dual formats for quicktime and itunes to just go with one file type for movies and one for audio (or class of file types). I see little point in the existence of .mov anymore, does anyone else agree?

[Uncle Skeleton]

Originally Posted by glapher 

So .mov is an audio/video container that bears not identification as to whether the content is audio or video? I wasn't aware of that, thanks.

Not only that, mov format can contain any combination of audio, video, text, flash, interactive "wired" sprites, and many more types (like "tween", "timecode", html, QTVR, etc). It is an amazingly flexible format.

Having said that, it really is a poor implementation the voice recording feature. Since itunes is destined to play audio files as per the de facto standards on os x, it makes little sense for this to be in a .mov container. I understand that it's the usual output of quicktime but it doesn't integrate well with the rest of the os, so either the rest of the os and itunes have to change or the quicktime extension. Guess what I think should change, lol.

It makes sense if you consider this simple rule: iTunes is for playing, QT is for editing.

If you set all .mov files to open in iTunes, I think you will have a better experience. Get info in Finder (cmd-i), set "Open with..." to iTunes, and click the "Change all" button.

Also I am disappointed that you cannot set specific bitrates just high and max settings, all this customization exists for itunes, why not quicktime?

Just like nearly all other recording mechanisms, QT expects you to record and edit in a lossless, fast, high-bitrate medium, and when you are satisfied with your recording and editing, you will then compress it into your final product using a lossy, lower-bitrate, more resource-demanding medium. It's true that today's computers are mostly powerful enough to do both real-time capture AND compression at the same time (both audio and video, which QT uses the same mechanism for I believe), however this is not a foregone conclusion, and it doesn't solve the problem that if you capture in a lossy format and then make edits (which is nearly inevitable, if only to trim the beginning and end), you will have to do an additional lossy conversion afterwards. This might not matter to you personally, but that is the rationale behind the design.

Because as is you have to, and that's what I am going to do in the future, go with garage band, just for recording a simple line in or soundcard audio from the mac....tstststs...

Just because you don't want to convert after? Does garage band capture straight to m4a? (I have not used it)

As an aside may I ask what the difference between .m4v and .mov is (and mp4), not the rudimentary stuff - I am aware of this, but why doesn't apple just do away with dual formats for quicktime and itunes to just go with one file type for movies and one for audio (or class of file types). I see little point in the existence of .mov anymore, does anyone else agree?

Mov is more flexible, the other side of the coin is that being less flexible makes m4v more predictable (also m4v has additional copy protection/DRM that Apple might like for certain things). Mov advantages over m4v include: more track formats (as I said above), reference movies (referencing other files, including over the network), interactivity, and support for arbitrary codecs (divx/flash/DV/lossless/ac3/etc). This makes mov desirable for a lot of things, but this is also what makes it UNdesirable for certain things, like hardware devices (ipod), where you want a minimal functionality without worrying about needing to support extended features.

m4v and m4a are simply different names for the same thing (mp4).

[glapher]

Uncle thank's for the truly stellar response, can't thank you enough. All the best.

No garage band doesn't convert on the fly, you need to export it, or "share" it as for some strange reason the menu for it is. It's now perfectly clear what you mean, and apple's intent, .mov is a flexible and versatile container that doesn't compress audio capture so that one can have the potential to edit it later (and hence why extraction of the .mov files in garage band from mov files produces aiff files - something I didn't know why it happened). So, everything's clear now, with a small qualm that I really think apple ought have integrated some functionality to export in .mp4 in quicktime since the idevices as far as I can't understand won't support .mov.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Originally Posted by glapher 

So, everything's clear now,

Great!

with a small qualm that I really think apple ought have integrated some functionality to export in .mp4 in quicktime since the idevices as far as I can't understand won't support .mov.

Two things, first, the idevices do support .mov, but it has to fit certain restrictions (codec, size, bitrate, etc, the same restrictions as for mp4 files).

Second, QT player does export to mp4, but you need to buy QT Pro to use that option. There is a 3rd party freeware app for it called QT Amateur that you can use too.

What QT doesn't do is "save" (rather than "export") mp4, which I think is a real failing. Mp4 isn't as flexible as mov, but for most users it would be good enough (simple things like moving/deleting segments of the video, adding chapters, and editing metadata would be possible). QT insists on using quicktime file format for all saving; other file formats (mp4, avi, dv, etc) can be opened and "exported" (which means re-encoding all the media tracks), but not saved (which means not re-encoding). There is no good reason for this limitation IMO.

[glapher]

hmmm, I had bought qt pro, but updated to sl and I thought that quicktime X would kinda incorporate quicktime pro functionality, then seeing as it did not, I thought about running qt pro as well, but then I kinda thought it would be an anachronism to run an old version of quicktime alongside X....

I better look into the precise restrictions then for .mov as well as .mp4 for the idevices for future compatibility, I spent a good few hours last night converting some material to .m4v via handbrake only to have an unsupported output for the ipad. Still there are things like oplayer there to handle that, but not taking advantage of the hardware acceleration of h.264 for playback is a huge drawback.

Oh, I see what you mean about re-encoding, and of course I echo your sentiments there. As far as I can tell for an audio quicktime recording re-encoding wouldn't be a big deal since it saves the audio as an aiff track within the container but for video there really must be a considerable loss. Strange how a h.264 (that's the protocol used I presume within the .mov container in qt) encoding has to be re-encoded at the same h.264 protocol for another container such as .mp4, i thought it was only a matte of encapsulating the data in a different container.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton 

Not only that, mov format can contain any combination of audio, video, text, flash, interactive "wired" sprites, and many more types (like "tween", "timecode", html, QTVR, etc). It is an amazingly flexible format.

...

Mov is more flexible, the other side of the coin is that being less flexible makes m4v more predictable (also m4v has additional copy protection/DRM that Apple might like for certain things). Mov advantages over m4v include: more track formats (as I said above), reference movies (referencing other files, including over the network), interactivity, and support for arbitrary codecs (divx/flash/DV/lossless/ac3/etc). This makes mov desirable for a lot of things, but this is also what makes it UNdesirable for certain things, like hardware devices (ipod), where you want a minimal functionality without worrying about needing to support extended features.

A lot of those "advantages" such as interactivity, reference movies, QTVR, etc. are deprecated things that Apple has killed off in QuickTime X. Sure, you can still use them if you install QuickTime 7, but who knows how long that option will last.

MPEG-4 can handle a few different codecs, too, although H.264 and AAC are certainly the most common. Apple takes advantage of this for their copy protection, AFAIK — they simply stick their own custom codecs which are based on the standard ones, but encrypted. Opening a protected movie from iTunes in QuickTime Player reveals the video codec to be "AVC0 Media" and the audio codec to be "AAC (Protected)". I see no reason Apple couldn't do that with QuickTime or, really, any other container format.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

A lot of those "advantages" such as interactivity, reference movies, QTVR, etc. are deprecated things that Apple has killed off in QuickTime X. Sure, you can still use them if you install QuickTime 7, but who knows how long that option will last.

Wow, QTX actually can't open movies with wired sprites in them... I didn't know that. I thought it was just like any other app using the QT API underneath. I guess in that case, there isn't a good reason they couldn't have made QTX an all-mp4 app. Maybe they will, even.

I see no reason Apple couldn't do that with QuickTime or, really, any other container format.

I think for simplicity it helps them to start with a file format that wasn't already common in the wild, with non-compatible codecs. Just so they don't have to teach Joe 6pack to tell the difference between DIV3 and XVID. That would be enough to make me choose mp4/m4v if I was in their shoes.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton 

Wow, QTX actually can't open movies with wired sprites in them... I didn't know that. I thought it was just like any other app using the QT API underneath.

It is just like any other app using the QT API. Thing is, they wrote a new Objective-C based QuickTime API (QTKit), and then removed all the old C-based APIs from the 64-bit versions of the system frameworks. The result is that no 64-bit application can use any of the old QuickTime features, since they do not exist in QTKit, and that's all you've got as far as QuickTime goes. The new QuickTime Player is a 64-bit app and uses QTKit, so it naturally is going to have to hand off such movies to the QuickTime 7 Player, if you have it installed.

I don't see why that would come as a big surprise, though. Apple's doing their best to kill off Flash because of its proprietary nature, so why would they want to hang onto an ancient also-ran proprietary Flash competitor which was utterly defeated in the marketplace years ago? They're moving to HTML5 for that stuff now.

I guess in that case, there isn't a good reason they couldn't have made QTX an all-mp4 app. Maybe they will, even.

It's not only that — the audio and video recordings QTX makes use the AAC and H.264 codecs, respectively, which just so happen to be the same codecs commonly used with the MPEG-4 container. And since MPEG-4 is based on the QuickTime format (I think that the wired sprites et al. could even work in the MPEG-4 container format, if anyone were crazy enough to write a player that supported it), there's probably actually very little practical difference in those file formats, other than that QuickTime isn't supported by as many third-party audio and video apps.

Bottom line I guess is that I agree with the OP that it is quite odd that the QuickTime container format is still being used in QuickTime X, especially for audio recording. I wouldn't bet on them not dumping it in some future release.

[glapher]

Thanks for the very interesting replies guys, I had a fairly simple query, and I ended up being educated on the topic I knew little about, that doesn't happen very often in other apple forums. Kudos.

One more thing (and no, it's not the new macbook air ) if I understand correctly audio recordings in quicktime are lossy and use acc in high quality, and lossless and use aiff in max, right? I wish apple could be a bit more transparent in that.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

I don't see why that would come as a big surprise, though. Apple's doing their best to kill off Flash

I'm not surprised about sprites/VR etc since no one really uses them anyway, but I would still be pretty surprised if they gave up on reference movies. Those are pretty darn useful. I hope they just didn't get around to it yet in QT v. X. Fingers crossed...

Or does mp4 support ref movies and I just don't know it?

Bottom line I guess is that I agree with the OP that it is quite odd that the QuickTime container format is still being used in QuickTime X, especially for audio recording. I wouldn't bet on them not dumping it in some future release.

Agree. It could just be that they were too chicken to take the final step of changing over, even after laying all the groundwork for it. Caution does have its merits.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton 

Or does mp4 support ref movies and I just don't know it?

MPEG-4 is based on the QuickTime format, so unless I'm misunderstanding something, the format itself should be capable of pretty much anything that QT is capable of. The problem is that there are no implementations of such a thing, and that if there were, then you'd have a bunch of MPEG-4 movies floating around that only worked with one specific player (well, I guess we already kind of have that with iTunes protected movies, but you get the point).