Got some extra time on your hands? Want to help me repro a bug?

Background:

I have been using Apple Quicktime Pro to transcode movies from my Panasonic Lumix digital camera into H.264 format. It has the following drawbacks: 1. it is slow. 2. It sometimes crashes very hard in a very bad way (i.e., causing the PC to fully lock or reboot).

Someone on this BBS suggested MPEG Streamclip as an alternative H.264 encoder. So I tried it. It solves problem 1, but it seems that problem 2 still happens to me.

Since MPEG Streamclip requires Apple Quicktime to be installed in order to work, I'm wondering if the crash is a quicktime bug.

I have a file with which I can reliably reproduce the crash, and I'm wondering if it happens to anyone else's system. If someone else besides me can repro it, I may be able to narrow it down to a Quicktime bug or some other issue that I can get help with from the companies in question.

Wanna try it? Here are my repro steps:


Install Apple Quicktime Player for Windows version 7.1.5. I use the version without itunes, but I don't know if that's a factor.
Download and unzip Mpeg Streamclip for Windows version 1.1 from http://www.squared5.com/.
Download my repro file http://www.geekhackfilk.com/temp/P1060092.MOV (231 MB)

Open MPEG Streamclip.
File, open files.
Select P1060092.MOV.
File, Export to Quicktime.

Settings:
Compression: H.264 Encoder
Quality: 100%
Multipass and B-Frames: Checked.
Limit Data Rate: Checked, Limit it to 1024kbps. Resulting file size should say ~24 MB.
Sound: MPEG Layer 3, Mono, Auto, 128 kbps.
Frame Size: 640x480 (unscaled).
Frame Blending and Better Downscaling: Checked.
Interlaced Scaling and Deinterlace Video: Unchecked.
Field Dominance: Upper Field First.
Rotation: No
Zoom: 100%
X/Y:1
Center: 0,0
Cropping: Unchecked
Fast Start: Checked

Click on MAKE MOVIE.

Change the file name by adding _1 to the end so that it doesn't overwrite the original.

Click on SAVE.

Make sure nothing else is running as you are doing this encode. If I'm right, this is gonna crash your system hard, early in the second pass, at some point between 8-10% through the second pass. Be prepared for that.

Thanks in advance to anyone who's willing to try this!

Can't help you with the bug, and I don't remember the thread you're talking about, but I just recently found a program called Super that seems to be able to transcode just about any file into just about any other kind of file. Maybe it'll work better for you.

Tony, I gave this a shot. I followed your directions to the tee and did not have any issues. The file converted fine. The total size of the file after the conversion was 23.1 MB. The total conversion time was maybe 15 - 20 minutes.

Thanks, Phi.

Maybe it's a bad codec I've got somewhere on the system. I'll also run memtest x86.

Hm.

Dignan, I'll give Super a try. Thanks!

dBpoweramp is usually the go-to tool for that sort of thing under Windows.

That's strange. But "hundreds of megs"? I freak out if I have under five gigs available.

I could have sworn there was a way to do two-pass encoding... I'm guessing that has to be done in the settings for the encoder, which it auto-selects for you most of the time, and it doesn't seem to give you access to the encoder options. I guess that's something for the next version of the software

I haven't had errors like you're getting. I've sort of fallen back on this program because it's all I need to transcode almost anything into almost anything else. I'm going to start using it for making flv files for my website.

Have you thought about just buying Quicktime Pro? I think it's only like $20. I bought it and used it to convert some home movies to H.264 so I could import them into my parents' iTunes library. It took forever, yes, but it worked!

Question: do you know how your Pentax encodes videos?** What container/codec are they?

The videos I've seen cameras create have had some pretty odd encoding, and perhaps it's the process of transcoding one odd format to another (H.264 is still pretty new, after all).

I know it's not optimal, but have you thought about/tried converting the videos to some sort of high-quality common format first (uncompressed AVI or something), then to H.264 afterwards?

**I went back and read your thread again - does your camera actually record .MOV files? That's a new one to me!

Suggesting something new to try or buy might not be what you're looking for, but I have been using TMPGEnc Xpress 4.0 to re-encode Divx files for playback on my Zune. The results are very good and output is very customizable. You can also queue-up a bunch of jobs and have them run all at once while you're away.

The program seems to natively support H.264 input and output. I will download and process your sample MOV file on my home computer and let you know how it turns out.

That looks cool. I already had TMPGEnc Xpress 3 from other video editing projects and just recently upgraded to 4 which I think is even better.

The Zune is pretty slick. I've only had it a week, but the video playback is awesome for plane rides. When flying on an old American Airlines 767 with CRTs in the ceiling and video being projected on the bulk head, the Zune really saves the day.

OK, so I don't know much about this H.264 stuff. The .MOV encoder in TMPGEnc Xpress has an H.246 option, but that created a file larger than your source. After looking through some Xpress docs, I saw that the MPEG4 encoder in AVC mode was the ticket for H.264. So, I encoded with that which does actually use a different encoder than Quicktime. First I did single pass, but then noticed you specified 2-pass in your original post. The single pass took 4 minutes and 2-pass was 8 minutes and change.

http://www.spmicro.com/temp/tony/P1060092_1-pass.mp4
http://www.spmicro.com/temp/tony/P1060092_2-pass.mp4

I selected the program to deinterlace only when necessary, but there seems to be some sort of deinterlacing weirdness on my playback. I wouldn't think your source would have been interlaced, but the deinterlacing filter has some features I can play with. If you like what you see enough, I can try and clean up the video a bit more later.

Oh yeah, the audio portion was encoded in AAC at 128k, Mono, 44.1khz. There was no MP3 option in TMPGEnc Xpress.

In regards to my last message: I don't know why I thought you said Pentax. What model is this camera? I'm curious.

I tried analyzing the MOV file, but I guess GSpot can't analyze MOV files for some reason.

I tried encoding your file with Super and it seemed to work perfectly. It was fast and created a file that was 13% of the size of the original, and the quality looked excellent. I have no idea why it would have a problem with a batch job. That's unfortunate because it looks like Super would be the program for you if it were stable enough. I do admit that I've had the occasional stability problem with it, but over all it's been a great application for me.

Do you have another machine you could try this all out on? Perhaps your machine has entered codec hell, from which a complete reformatting is the only escape

Oh, wait, Super wouldn't work for me anyway. I tried out the resulting file on the web site, and it did not have the "fast start" feature set in the file (as MPEG Streamclip and Quicktime Pro allowed me to).

Sorry, didn't mention that as being one of my requirements before.

I'll try a couple other encoders mentioned in this thread, and see how they fare.

Ah, I'm not sure I even know what that feature is.

If you ever wanted to try it again, could you try choosing MP4 as the container?

.....aaaaaand TMPGenc locks the system at 45%.

I must be in codec hell. How does one look up the installed codecs on one's system?

Attached is a screen shot of my codecs, per the Windows Control Panel. Anyone see anything bad in there?

G-Spot, referenced before, is often a big help here.

Honestly, I never install anything but one of the K-Lite Codec Packs (no relation to Kazaa Lite) any more, and I never have any problems. I'd suggest trying to uninstall the codecs you have installed and reinstall them with K-Lite.

Well, it's no help with MOVs, as it only understand AVI envelopes (and WMV to a lesser extent). But it can help you see what codecs are on your system and how the system is trying to use them. Probably less so with encoding now that I think of it.

What "mess" did K-Lite create? I have had zero problem with it, which is more than I can say for VLC. (I have never gotten VLC under Windows to play anything without an hour of fiddling, but that's beside the point.) The only thing I can think of that you might be talking about is the installation of Media Player Classic, and maybe the quasi-legal Real- and Quicktime-Alternatives. But you can install it without any of those.

You can use this to remove any codec's

http://www.cccp-project.net/download.php?type=cccpi

I personally install DefilerPak and Nvidia PureVideo. Defilerpak is a small set of codecs put together by a friend.