I transfered a ton of family videos to mp4 years ago for my parents, and have had them around on a hard drive for years. Today I went to open them on my mac, and the audio plays but the video doesn't. I installed Perian, hoping any codecs I needed might come up, and tried VLC, but no dice.

Anyone with video encoding and codec experience have any ideas or willing to take a look if I sent you a file? Would really like these to work again.

Thanks.

10/5/2013 5:48:57 PM

Perian is old

Please do send a video, so that one of us may find out what codecs they use.

10/5/2013 9:09:02 PM

yeah i'd be willing to take a look too

10/5/2013 11:45:25 PM

http://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo

Download mediainfo and drop the file in. Using the Tree view is a little cleaner imo (click view at the top, and then tree).

[Edited on October 6, 2013 at 2:51 PM. Reason : .]

10/6/2013 2:50:18 PM

I only remembered that as something bundled with the K-Lite Codec Pack, not a cross-platform program

10/6/2013 3:53:13 PM

Thanks guys. I uploaded an archive of a sample video and a screenshot from MediaInfo. Here's a link: http://mir.cr/QMUK3MSE

I had forgotten what program I used when I had the camcorder connected at the digital media lab at NCSU (which is how I did all of these). MediaInfo reminded me, it was Sorenson Squeeze.

MediaInfo said it should play fine in quicktime, but it does not.

Any help is appreciated it.

10/6/2013 11:31:49 PM

This is interesting.

So it played fine for me in VLC (video and audio both worked).
http://brentroad.com/photos/00531435.jpg


The sound played fine in quicktime, but no video. There was just a black screen.

http://brentroad.com/photos/00531439.jpg

I made sure my quicktime was up to date, it's close enough so I didn't bother updating it. I have 7.6.6 and current is 7.7.x. So you may want to try updating quicktime if you don't have the latest version.

Anyhow, I used xMediaRecode to re-encode it. I copied the audio as it was. Kept the mp4 container, and used..... mpeg-4 avc for the video.

It worked. The video and audio both worked fine in Quicktime and VLC. I'm not quite sure why that would be exactly. But perhaps someone a little more knowledgeable can explain.

http://brentroad.com/photos/00531440.jpg

Here are both in recode:
http://brentroad.com/photos/00531438.jpg

and both in mediainfo
http://brentroad.com/photos/00531437.jpg

EDIT: After looking some more, I found something else in mediainfo:
http://brentroad.com/photos/00531441.jpg

I also found this:
http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1396

I'm not sure if that would help you or not. I don't have a Mac to test it on.

This may help as well:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3775


At worst, you could reencode them. I used xMediaRecode. You can set them up as jobs and just have it run at night.

[Edited on October 7, 2013 at 1:27 AM. Reason : .]

10/7/2013 1:00:25 AM

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/307037?start=0&tstart=0

Everything I'm finding is saying it's an older windows thing.

I'm surprised it's not playing in VLC for you though. You may want to uninstall and install the latest version of VLC.

I'd probably just reencode them in a batch job. Just let them all run at night or while your at work.

[Edited on October 7, 2013 at 1:48 AM. Reason : .]

10/7/2013 1:40:58 AM

Any idea of a program to use on OSX, preferably free as in free beer?

10/7/2013 3:42:39 PM

HandBrake

10/7/2013 3:55:49 PM

Yeah, I think Handbrake would be your best option. I'd set up one small file and get the setting how you want them, and then I'd set up the rest as a queue and just run it overnight or something when you're not using your computer.

10/7/2013 7:00:21 PM