Mp4s

Bauzi · Post by **Bauzi** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 3:16 pm

I suggest CCCP with Zoomplayer (good player imo, just not toooooo easy to use like wmp. It has a different but not complicated handling

).

@Winamp:
I have... v5.32 (the freeware version) and it doesn´t play the videostream of a mp4.

Kurama StarKat · Post by **Kurama StarKat** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:20 pm

So is there any way to get mp4's to play on wmp? Runnin vista, with an up to date wmp. Tried winamp, didnt work. Would that codec pack y'all mentioned all wmp to play mp4 files?

Kurama StarKat · Post by **Kurama StarKat** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:21 pm

Only codec pak ive got is gordian knot.

Qyot27 · Post by **Qyot27** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 8:23 pm

CCCP

or

Haali Media Splitter + ffdshow

TheFireMonkey · Post by **TheFireMonkey** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 11:41 am

To be honest, I don't understand why people use mp4s in the first place since in my experience, they seldom work reliably for the majority of people. I'm always dismayed when something I want to watch is done as an mp4 because that means I will most likely not be able to watch it.

That said, I just downloaded Another Crappy Video, which I saw at Anime Evolution and knew I wanted - I loved it! So I get it and it's an mp4

but I try anyway. Quicktime starts up and gives me an error which was oh so useful

it said it was unable to open the file due to an error number -8971. I just love useful error messages. Anyway, I came here and was going to see if someone could make a suggestion and before posting I saw Shazzy suggest using VLC, so I thought, ok - if VLC can make mp4s useful to me, that's a worth while thing to have.

So I used the link Shazzy supplied and went to install VLC - it was about 80% installed when it gave me this message:

Error while loading DLL 'unicows.dll"!
The application will terminate now.

So, does anyone know what the problem would be or how I might fix it ... or another way to play the video?

And also, I'm honestly curious - does anyone know why it seems MP4 is so popular here? I've been animating for several years and from the start I have used AVIs because I found them higher quality, more reliable and smaller files, granted there are way too many codecs so you have the problem that not everyone has the right codec but that is solved by making sure you let people know what codec they need and that is the only problem I've ever had with AVI. MP4s on the other hand tend to have lower quality and larger files so what's the attraction - I'm not trying to start a war over what format is best, etc, I'm really trying to understand and see what the advantage is for MP4s that causes people to use them.

post-it · Post by **post-it** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 12:26 pm

.. VLC has never let me down , then again I HATE usoft's Media Player

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 12:33 pm

using h.264 [correctly] gives you better image quality and a lower filesize (two very good things to have in this hobby, which explains its popularity among the regulars here) when compared to xvid in .avi (which was the de facto encoding standard before x.264)

a brief example of xvid vs x.264 is my blue trailer, the .mp4 version is roughly half the size of the xvid version, and still looks better imo.

I assume you're using windows. A few of the earlier posts mentioned CCCP (other posts also mentioned that h.264 can make quicktime cry)
CCCP also gives you media player classic, which is what I recommend for viewing .mp4 files (that or vlc)

TheFireMonkey · Post by **TheFireMonkey** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 12:35 pm

post-it wrote:.. VLC has never let me down , then again I HATE usoft's Media Player

Well, I hope that I can find out why VLC failed to install so I can give it a try - it would be nice to have something that will play MP4s reliably.

TheFireMonkey · Post by **TheFireMonkey** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 1:10 pm

Kariudo wrote:using h.264 [correctly] gives you better image quality and a lower filesize (two very good things to have in this hobby, which explains its popularity among the regulars here) when compared to xvid in .avi (which was the de facto encoding standard before x.264)

a brief example of xvid vs x.264 is my blue trailer, the .mp4 version is roughly half the size of the xvid version, and still looks better imo.

So is h.264 a newer encoding for MP4s? Perhaps when I was looking at things I was comparing an older implimentation of the MP4 format. I do animation, that is, not AMV but actually drawing the frames and then compiling them into a video format and I use AVIs with DivX compression which I chose because it gave high quality with small files - a while back I tried doing one of my animations in flash format since that is a popular streaming format and I was surprised to find that the file was almost 40% larger and no where near as high a quality. Oh, although xvid seems to have gained greater popularity than DivX - you have to really know how to set everything right or it produces larger files, so xvid vs x.264 may not be the best comparison, I mean, if you like using MP4s better I'm not going to try to change your mind, but if you want to compare to AVIs, I'd suggest DivX over Xvid.

Kariudo wrote:I assume you're using windows. A few of the earlier posts mentioned CCCP (other posts also mentioned that h.264 can make quicktime cry)
CCCP also gives you media player classic, which is what I recommend for viewing .mp4 files (that or vlc)

Yes, I run Windows [I don't actually like it, but I dislike Macs more than I dislike Windows and Linux doesn't have the software I need for what I do] In fact, I run Windows 98SE - I refuse to ever put XP or Vista on my computer, although I may end up having to bend a bit and put 2000 on it, but for now, all my software works on 98SE so I have no reason to switch.

So, about CCCP - when you say media player classic, do you mean Windows Media Player or a different media player [I'm hoping that it isn't a M$ product as I try to avoid them as much as possible, but if that's what it has to be - sigh]

What I normally use to watch videos is BS player, which was able to play the video stream from the MP4 I just downloaded, but it had no sound at all - which kind of interferes with enjoying a music video

I'm still hoping that I might manage to install VLC - I just have to find out why the installation aborted and what I can do to fix it.

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 1:37 pm

media player classic took the basic look of the wmp6.4 gui, but isn't related to wmp in any other way. IIRC it's an open-source project

as for the xvid thing, this pretty much takes care of everything. One of the sections covers encoding with xvid, which is what I used to make the xvid encode of that amv. (so the divx-5 compatible xvid encode that I did is smaller and looks better than the divx encode would)
another section explains the pros/cons of a variety of codecs

AnimeMusicVideos.org

Mp4s

mp4 headaches