I am wondering which command line settings i need to explicitly set (or avoid) to make a video encoded into x264 (in the mp4 format) using ffmpeg by default playable in Quicktime. I find that a number of the predefined preset files work for me but some of them won't, for example I can't get any of the lossless ones to work and I'm interested in those ones as well. For example libx264-lossless_max.ffpreset will encode my video but it's only playable in VLC, not in Quicktime. In Quicktime the video stays black. I know Perian is an option but I want my file to be playable without installing Perian. Thanks for your help.
7
votes
But why care about defective players? There always will be players which can't play your file. And, nobody uses Quicktime precisely because it doesn't support most useful formats. (The same situation with "Windows Media Player" nonsense). VLC is free and available for all platforms, why not just use it?
– Display Name
@SargeBorsch in some industries certain players are, for better or worse, de facto standards - for example, Quicktime offers frame-by-frame scrubbing (other players like RV do this too, though, so there's really no excuse -- haven't found a free software scrubber though :( )
– lofidevops
1 Answers
7
votes
http://ffmpeg.org/trac/ffmpeg/wiki/x264EncodingGuide:
Keep in mind that Apple Quicktime only supports YUV 420 color space for x264 encoded movies, and does not support anything higher than the "main" profile. This leaves only 2 options for quicktime compatible clips: baseline and main. All of the other profiles are currently not supported with Quicktime, although they will play back in pretty much any other player.
Also, to the answer above: Quicktime is not a proprietary codec per se. Quicktime is a media wrapper capable of containing many different codecs. Quicktime itself is not a codec.
