H264 mov not available on PC?

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
March 12, 2017
6 replies
8203 views

I need to export a film for a festival. They are asking for a Quicktime export with H264 codec, max bitrate 15,000. They linked to a tutorial with dialogue box from a Mac. On my PC, H264 exports have .mp4 extensions. Quicktime exports have fewer options for presets, none of which is H264. Should I export an H264 .mp4 file and convert it outside of Premiere to .mov? Other suggestions? Am I missing something obvious?

This topic has been closed for replies.

A

aldel

Participating Frequently

I have the same problem. It's dumb, but the organizers specifically say "mp4 files are not acceptable".

Installing QuickTime Player doesn't help. I made sure I have the latest version installed. There is still no H.264 option listed in the codecs when QuickTime is the selected format, nor is there any preset that helps. (Motion JPEG, which is another option the film festival allows, is also not there; and of course ProRes isn't there because it's Windows.)

I don't want to export an mp4 and just rename the extension to .mov, because that doesn't change the file container format. Sure, some programs will still be able to play it, but QuickTime and mp4 are two different containers; if someone can't play mp4, then they won't be able to play the resulting file.

My plan for now is to export as mp4, then use ffmpeg to make a QuickTime file with the same H.264 stream (and the same AAC audio stream) as the mp4 file. For example, if my exported file is Filename.mp4, I would type:

ffmpeg -i Filename.mp4 -c copy Filename.mov

This runs very quickly and doesn't lose quality, because it doesn't decode and re-encode the data; it's just copying the same compressed data into the new container.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

While container issues are a valid concern, it sounds like the festival is Mac based. As such, there's little to worry about when it comes to renaming a .mp4 to .mov.

Nevertheless, an excellent tip on how to re-wrap a file with ffmpeg.

A

aldel

Participating Frequently

Thanks! Yeah, I agree that they should be able to read an mp4 file, regardless of its extension. They probably can even if they don't know they can. Seems like a big risk to take though, when they explicitly say that they can't. And if they can read the format, they should be able to read it with its correct original extension.

N

nealb27245766

Participant

Hi there. If I understand your issue correctly, you will probably want to choose h.264 and then whatever preset you want (if not sure and your sequence was edited to the required settings already, choose Match Source - High Bitrate). Macs will render this into an .mov or .mp4. Windows will usually spit out .mp4. For all intents and purposes, they are the same things: wrappers that hold the h.264 compressed file within. I would be very surprised if your festival didn't take the .mp4.