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Quicktime file plays longer than it should
Here’s a weird one. Cut a client’s video into 3 segments. Played them back, they look fine. Uploaded to FTP server. Downloaded them and watching again — look fine to me.
BUT client downloads them and says that each file contains the entire original file. And, on my computer, each of the 3 parts has a different running time but the same exact file size, something that the client thinks is probably bigger than it should be. I think I used H264 codec, they’re each about 6 mins, and each file is 163MB.
Any thoughts? What happened? What’s wrong, and how do I export them to make them right? They’re going up on YouTube in the end, so I’m not too worry about them appearing a bit lossy, if needed.
Thanks, Dave.
David J. Smolar
Preditor
Creative Video of Washington
creativevideo.com
inbetweenthings.com -
3 Replies
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[David J. Smolar] “Cut a client’s video into 3 segments”
How? For example, if you used Quicktime Player to trim and save then you have only effectively changed the start and end pointers for playback, not actually changed the source file contents. Please give specific details of your workflow, then folks may be able to suggest where the anomaly you’re seeing could have originated and hopefully can point to a better workflow/solution.
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Andy, you’re right. I just woke up and realized that I’d split this file into 3 parts by taking the original file, trimming it down, and saving a copy of that as ‘part 1’, then taking the original, trimming down, and repeating the same method twice more to get parts 2 and 3. Looks like, though I’ve done that before to trim and get selects from a quicktime file, sometimes, even when you save the trimmed file under a new name, it retains the original source file’s metadata.
I suppose the fact that the 3 parts were different running times but each had the same exorbitant file size — the exact same size for all 3 — was an indication of something being up. End result was the client saw all the original media when playing back each of the 3 files. Strangely enough, I couldn’t duplicate his problem: I even downloaded one of the files onto my home computer and not only do they play fine, but when I open them in Quicktime, the program displays for me the correct file size though the finder still shows all 3 as being the same, impossibly large size.
Solutions? I simply opened each part, resaved under another name [again], and now the Finder indicates that each part has a different file size, so I think they’ll be ok. It’s most frustrating to me that I can’t replicate the client’s problem.
Thanks again, Dave.
David J. Smolar
Preditor
Creative Video of Washington
creativevideo.com
inbetweenthings.com -
Thanks for posting back David.
Well that makes sense then. I’d guess your client is probably looking at the clip on a different system (not Mac) that is ignoring the start/end payback pointers of your quicktime file (probably doesn’t recognize them) and so simply accessing and displaying the full media, thats why you’re not seeing the same thing. In future, if you’re using QT Player, you can use “Save As” in QT Player instead of using Save. That will copy just the used media into a new file rather than altering metadata only in the existing file.Cheers
Andy
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