H.264 Playback

[Limited]

Okay, my parents bought a HD camcorder, no idea why they did buy a HD one, as they dont understand what HD is. (My parents are very tech illiterate) anyways, so this camcorder gives you the ability to record in full HD (1920 x 1080), or other settings such as HD-HR, which is 1280 x 720 60 fps.

Anyways, so I've recorded a few HD things, I've copied over the MP4 files it creates onto the computer, so now I wish to play them, sadly I've tried alot of things and it doesnt work, quicktime (which I cant stand) just displays a nice green screen, VLC shows the first frame then errors out. I tried some thing called Media Player Classic and that just shows the first few seconds then freezes.

I know its issues with codecs and stuff but I cant really find any thing that can easily play it back fully. The only thing I can think of is trying it on my dads mac which has quicktime, apparently quicktime on a mac can play H.264 encoded videos.

Heres a picture of the info quicktime gives me.
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/5141/speczc7.png

[Bodzilla]

it didnt come with a CD or something that has the codecs on it?
thats fucking lame.

[Pope]

H.264 codec requires outrageous amounts of resources.

I've heard you need at least 2.0Ghz Dual Core just to be able to play it.

http://x264.nl/ Seems like the only working H.264 player. Don't forget to uncheck the other codecs.

And obviously you'll need huge hard drive space just to keep the movie files on there.

*Note* all educated speculation

[Limited]

It does come with a DVD with programs on.

Nero 7 Essentials
Ulead DVD MovieFactory 5 SE
Quicktime 7.1 + iTunes 7.3
Adobe Reader 8
Xacti Screen Capture 1.1

So there is things, I'm not exactly sure what the Nero thing is, I just installed it thinking it was the general burning thing, but it asked me which files it wanted to associate with.

[InnerGoat]

Go update your codecs by installing CCCP or ffdshow tryouts

also, lol



edit - found some raw clips from that camcorder and I was able to play them back with zoom player. VLC didn't like it for whatever reason.

[SuperSunny]

H.264 codec requires outrageous amounts of resources.

I've heard you need at least 2.0Ghz Dual Core just to be able to play it.

http://x264.nl/ Seems like the only working H.264 player. Don't forget to uncheck the other codecs.

And obviously you'll need huge hard drive space just to keep the movie files on there.

*Note* all educated speculation

It doesn't require many resources, just a good enough processor.

My MacBook (when it was 1 gb of ram) could play 1080p video, h.264 smoothly (as long as other apps were closed). With 2 gb of ram now, it can play it even better, and my processor is only 1.83 ghz Core Duo (first gen).

Quicktime on Windows is the same as Quicktime on Mac in terms of playable content. It must be another bug.

[Limited]

Hmm, the resource thing could be to do with the problem of playback stopping, its more of, the video runs then after like 2 - 3 seconds the video stops, but the slider thing and timer still goes up.

I can play the videos through the camera onto a HD tv, although my parents tv isnt HD so it cant use the HDMI cables =\ I might try it on my sisters tv though.

The thing about ffdshow, I installed that, applied the codec but with no luck.

@ Sunny
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/

[bitterbanana]

I use this codec for H.264 videos: http://www.rlslog.net/coreavc-professional-edition-v1650-edge/

It's surprisingly fast on my 4 year old computer.