[johntravers]

mate sent me some films taken with their camcorder. the file opens okay on their imac, but not on mine.

the file was from their camcorder, imported through i think imovie but im not sure

codec says mpeg-2 SD camcorder, integer (little Endian), timecode and is a .mov file

both machines 10.5.5 mine ppc theirs intel.

it opens fine in quicktime for them, when i open in quicktime or vlc i get no pic, just sound. quicktime tells me theres a codec missing but ive no idea which...


theres no way they have installed any codecs as they are cluesless with macs

vlc says

main: no suitable decoder module for fourcc `m2v1'.
VLC probably does not support this sound or video format.

[BifBologna]

I'm not an expert, but it sounds like maybe you need the MPEG-2 Playback component from Apple.

[johntravers]

BifBologna, on November 30th 2008, 05:42 PM, said:

I'm not an expert, but it sounds like maybe you need the MPEG-2 Playback component from Apple.

nah i tried that

[teflon]

VLC should be able to read it, seeing as it can read almost anything.
what programme do they use to play it back on their iMac?
if its Quicktime, do they have Perian installed?

[johntravers]

I tried VLC, no joy. I have perian installed, they just have a stock imac.

i did some googling, it would appear that the problem is easy to find, but the solution im stumped at.

Most of the info went over my head, but it would appear that camcorders make files that appear to be .mov files but arent quite.

http://www.mindsubur.../2008/08/28/70/

this guy had the problem in windows, unfortunately his solution is for windows too.

"That made me think: why the raw data is an m2v, but the fourccs are m2v1?!?!"


basically he wrote a script to change something.

"Since I do not have time to investigate the MOV file format and, well, not knowledge at all, I tried the newbie method: search for m2v1 in the binary file with an hex editor.

Found 2 occurrencies: m2v1 and ‘m2v1′
The next obvious step was to try to change them to the real m2v fourccs: mp2v
Et voila! The mov played flawlessly in my VLC player (and others).

So I wanted to contribute and made a very skinny command line app for win that could change the fourccs for me.

Beware: this does not check for anything! Just changes up to two occurences of m2v1 to mp2v (anyware in the file)."

He also linked to an apple discussion that

http://discussions.a...ssageID=7789424

seems to say, along with other things i found, that if you have ilife 08 installed, theres something in that that corrects the file, which will be why it opens up on my friends computer as normal, with quicktime, but not on mine.

two questions, if anyone can help.

if i buy ilife, will it install imovie 08, even if my computer is below specs for imovie (g4 dual 867) or will it refuse to install.


any advice on recreating what the pc guy did, basically open up the movie's binary in a hex editor, and replaces two occurences of m2v1 to mp2v ?

thanks as ever in advance

[teflon]

well you can work around the spec limitations in a couple of ways. Pacifist will probably work best, as it just delves into the pkg and installs whatever you tell it to from there.

alternatively, you could just ask your friend to export it to another format.
They can use loads of apps, VLC, Handbrake (which will now convert everything that VLC can read, so long as the former is installed), iMovie itself.

[johntravers]

found the answer was in the pc answer

if anyone else has this problem

download hexedit
find m2v1 replace with mp2v twice
save
done