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Digital picture frame compression quandary
This is a strange one and I didn’t know where else to turn but to Creative Cow.
I purchased a Kodak M820 digital picture frame as a test for proposed Point of Sale displays. The frame’s stated support of MOV and AVI files was the selling factor. We have HD content which we want to resize and compress to run on this frame.
Unfortunately, trying to load our video as either 800×450 MOV and AVI files with a wide variety of codecs into the frame has not been successful. The error message is that “this format not supported.” When I went to the Kodak website and downloaded the extended user guide, I found the disclaimer: “Videos created with or copied from other sources may not play on the frame.” (I am able to preview the files using the Kodak EasyShare software on my PC.)
So that question is, “What kind of MOV or AVI file does a camera create that I don’t seem to be able to duplicate with Final Cut Studio 2 Compressor, Sorenson Squeeze 5 or Quicktime Pro?”
Two calls to customer support were rather sad. No one seems to understand what I’m talking about.
Would appreciate your help.
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4 Replies
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Well there are a huge amount of CODECs that can be wrapped in a MOV – what did you try?
A quick look on the Kodak UK site says it’ll support MPEG-1 and MPEG-4 as well.
PhotoJPEG is nearly always used by digital cameras that use MOV
Ideally you need to inspect the properties of a movie taken with a Kodak camera
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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free! -
I was also going to suggest making an MPEG-2 and see if that will play.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
It would be surprising if MPEG-2 worked, no still camera I’ve ever come across can capture video to MPEG-2
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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free! -
I bought this unit also with similar aims in mind.
Forget other codecs. I tried everything to no avail. Is Kodak knowingly miss-selling this? I think so… especially if their own support cannot back up the stated claims on the box. More iritating are all the internet sites that make the same claims but have clearly never even tried the movie playback on the unit or probably (I suspect) never even laid hands on it. Everyone wants to make sales and shift product and they never bother to query the PR blurb.Anyway (rant over) here is a workaround…
If you analyse the movie that comes with the device you will find it is a muxed mpeg1 with a .mpg extension. That is the only movie format (that I can find) that will work on the m820.
But it is very hard these days to get anything to output custom-sized .mpg movies … quicktime and compressor won’t. What to do? Help is at hand with a software company called imtoo (yes that is the correct spelling). For the Mac they make an app called Video Converter and it allows you to convert almost anything to anything, including, yes, to custom mpeg1 files with .mpg extensions. It works!
You have to play around with sizes and settings a bit, until you get what you want. I got some good results going straight form H264 movs to mpg.
Good Luck.
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