H.264 in Quicktime wrapper out of Media Encoder

[Ron Price]

[Dave LaRonde] “Now, neither of these will make good files in offbeat sizes. They need standard dimensions.”

That’s what I’ve gathered. And, naturally, since it’s a sign display, one of the files is indeed a non-standard size. I’ll have to go back to pestering the venue to let me send them something else…

[Kevin Camp]

i use mpeg streamclip… render out of ae as quicktime photo-jpeg, or lossless animation. then import into streamclip and export to quicktime. select h.264 for compression, check the multipass and b-frame options and set the other settings as needed.

the qt h.264 files are nearly the same as the mp4 variety with similar settings — qt files are usually a little larger even with all the same settings.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Daniel Waldron]

I agree on MPEG Streamclip. Better quality Quicktime H.264 than AME in my opinion. Free download too.

[Tero Ahlfors]

In addition to bit rate you’ll need to set a keyframe value for the encoder if you’re exporting Quicktime H264. Otherwise it’ll look terrible.

[Michael Szalapski]

If you can get a decent-looking MP4 out of Adobe Media Encoder, try simply changing the file extension from MP4 to MOV. See if it works for you. I’ve seen that do the trick in some cases.

– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Matthew Ross]

I used to use an x264 implementation out of Compressor to achieve this (way better than Apple’s H.264), but that was so long ago I do not recall how we got that particular x264 version into Compressor.

The last time I had to do this, I rendered an intermediate file out of After Effects (or Premiere or whatever), something like ProRes or like others listed in this thread, then rendered to x264 using Handbrake, then re-wrapped the file to .MOV using Quicktime Pro 7 by simply using Save As, and it would do so without re-compressing. (I do not know if Quicktime 10 lets you do this).

Yeah, it was three steps so wouldn’t be good if you had to do a lot of files, but I got good looking H.264 in .MOV containers in the end.

[Ron Price]

Thanks, everybody! MPEG Streamclip did the job for me.

[Michael Szalapski] “If you can get a decent-looking MP4 out of Adobe Media Encoder, try simply changing the file extension from MP4 to MOV. See if it works for you. I’ve seen that do the trick in some cases.”

I did that first thing, and it worked fine as far as playing back, but it changed the codec listed to AAC. It has been suggested that the venue’s QC process involves checking the file in Quicktime to see if it says H.264. I didn’t want to take the chance that the files would be rejected. It’s a new client, and I’m trying to do this without too much back and forth or antagonizing of the venue.

[Matthew Ross] ”
Yeah, it was three steps so wouldn’t be good if you had to do a lot of files, but I got good looking H.264 in .MOV containers in the end.”

Still better than my “make a ugly version in a H.264 .mov wrapper, open in QT, paste my nice .mp4 video in, then trim out the bad video” solution. ????

[Esben Rahbek]

I have the same problems as you, Ron. I tried MPEG Streamclip with no luck. Would you mind posting your settings?

[Ron Price]

These are the settings I used back when I did it. (It was for digital signage, which is why the dimensions are weird.) It worked fine, as I recall, but I haven’t used it since. I was able to get it to work well with much lower rates as well, I believe.

If this doesn’t help, post again and I’ll see if I can do a test file or something…