QT made on PC won't open on mac?

I exported a QT on a PC at work today (okay this is really an Avid not FCP question but I need help here) and am trying to upload it to the web tonight on my mac at home but keep getting error msg that it isn't a video. Except that it is, I played it at work in quicktime and in real player. How to get around this??? it was compressed with the H.264 codec

Windows Media is a version of H.264. You may easily have a Windows Media movie inside the Quicktime wrapper, or worse, a WMV file with QT tacked on the end. And no, a Mac isn't going to have any idea what that is.

You did leave out an important bit. How did you get it home? Fetch? FTP? Auto doesn't always work right on FTP. If you pick the wrong transmission setting, you will get garbage at the other end.

We have interesting times getting between our Avids and the Macs.

I think the free MPEGStreamclip will convert for you. I think Flip4Mac will do that, too. If Streamclip has no idea, you may need to export it again.

How large is the file?

Koz

Sorry - didn't realize I was leaving out crucial information!

I got it home by burning it to a data DVD. The file size is 210 MB.

I exported as a quicktime file from Avid Media Compser, but it still might be a windows media file? drat. How can I avoid this? (I hate working on PCs. Now I have another reason for this.)

MPEG streamclip won't recognize it either. I have never used Flip4Mac and will try.

It's too late for me to upload and send this one, but just so I know, what would have been a good export option? I set it to export as QuickTime, chose compression as H.264. The same thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago, trying the same thing, but that time I had exported using the Avid DV codec to save time and so assumed it was a codec problem. But now I"m having the exact same issue with H.264 which should theoretically work. Would a plain old DV codec have worked? Or is it some other export option I'm not thinking about?

thanks for helping.

> I exported as a quicktime file from Avid Media Compser, but it still might be a windows media
> file?

Maybe -- not an Avid expert here -- but I'm pretty sure it depends on the settings you used. I've used Avid XPress Pro and successfully made DV NTSC movie files in QuickTime format rather than AVI, and they have played on several Macs with no problems. So I don't think it's a done deal. Did you put an .mov extension on it?


www.derekmok.com

Thanks Derek.

Yes it does have a .mov extension on it. So when you do it you choose "DV NTSC" as the compression codec? and this works for you? I thought h.264 was safe, but maybe this is the problem. Any other special steps you have taken to make sure it works?

> So when you do it you choose "DV NTSC" as the compression codec? and this works for you? I
> thought h.264 was safe, but maybe this is the problem.

DV NTSC worked when I was working on the Avid XPress Pro. I haven't done an H.264 movie file with Avid. But I'm thinking you might save yourself some headaches if you went to a more cross-platform-friendly format first, then used a Mac for the H.264 encoding. You lose a digital generation, but if these are proofs, that may not be a major deal. And if it were, perhaps you could use a better codec. At any rate, I'd do an array of tests on that PC Avid system, export multiple test files in various formats and see which one works best.


www.derekmok.com

Ok. It's hard to do lots of tests because each export took hours!

I will try DV NTSC next time.

Thank you!

Yow. Try a one-minute test clip per test. The point is to check codecs and combinations of formatting options, not to do the whole show.


www.derekmok.com

Just in case anyone still cares, or anyone finds this thread while searching for answers in the future.....

I figured out what the problem was. the Roxio disk burning software on my PC was encoding the files in such a way that a mac couldn't read them. it had nothing to do with the quicktime encoding. voila!

...then you are burning them the wrong way. If you burn Data Disks for transport, they are not "encoded" at all. Check your settings. What software? Toast?

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

> ...then you are burning them the wrong way. If you burn Data Disks for transport, they are not
> "encoded" at all. Check your settings. What software? Toast?

Or, an even simpler possibility is that there's something wrong with the DVD drive on either the source PC, or the target Mac. The disc itself could be just fine, but DVD drives aren't a sure thing and can refuse to read only certain brands of discs, for example.


www.derekmok.com

Not Toast, but some other Roxio drag and drop software for pc. I tried multiple disks, different brands, and the disks burned did load fine on another PC, but didn't on any of the 4 or 5 macs tried in my post production house or at home. So something is going on with the dvd burning software. When the same QT was copied onto a network drive and opened on one of the same macs that didn't read the disk, it played just fine.