Re: MM doesn't accept *.mp4 Videos - although codec is installed!

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Interesting conversation about .MP4 files. John Kelly and PapaJohn are much
smarter than me on this stuff... but here's my 2 cents (or a buck-50 if you
read this whole thread:).

..MP4 is essentially an Apple Quicktime format. If you want to edit .MP4
files (without messy format conversion)... you will need a Mac. Yes you can
play .MP4 videos on other media players... but only Quicktime and Apple
editing programs can fully manipulate those videos.

MPEG-4 is a broad standard with many flavors. It's important to know that
only some MPEG-4 videos use the .MP4 file extension (also described as
container format).

Microsoft has an mpeg-4 codec format (uses .ASF), Real Networks has one
(.RM), DivX uses mpeg-4 with .AVI and .DIVX, so does On2, and finally... the
king of MPEG-4 (Apple) uses .MOV and .MP4 extension for virtually the same
codec.

What does all this mean to you... not much, just background.

The engineers over at Sanyo never intended you to edit those movies with
Movie Maker (or any other video editing software). I know, I had many
meetings with Panasonic and Samsung about the same issue.

The product marketing types at Sanyo (and others selling tiny flash-card
camcorders) are pushing a concept called "shoot-n-share." The whole idea is
to skip video editing, just shoot video clips and import the clips to your PC
as you would JPEG photos, then share in email or online.

The shoot-n-share concept is gaining popularity outside the U.S., where
household PC penetration is much lower. But in the great US-of-A we're
spoiled by having the most powerful PCs (and most per household) in the
world... so video editing is fast becoming mainstream here. Ever wonder why
every digital still camera has a video mode, but nobody ever uses it? In the
global market, people like the 30 second video clips. But here most people
never use the video option because the quality is horrible when compared to
DV-AVI, and way too short. Thus they become "throw-away" videos.

Sanyo must have paid a license to Apple for the MPEG-4 codec and probably
the Quicktime player logo is even on the box. They may have even included a
really crappy one-off Sanyo video editing app. Nothing you would ever use.

So why .MP4 over other formats?
The conversation over at Sanyo went something like this 3 years ago:
Engineers said "hey, we want to use MPEG-4 codec from Apple because 1) it's a
semi-open standard, 2) it's cheap to license, 3) they are CE guys so they are
more familiar with MPEG formats and Quicktime, 4) MPEG-4 looks really good at
small sizes, and 5) they get to use a cheaper chip in the camcorder (Windows
Media compression is more processor intensive, especially when using the wmv9
codec, so it takes a much more expensive chip).

Then the marketing guys said: sounds good to us. nobody will really edit
these videos... only designed for playback and sharing. We'll include the
Quicktime Player in the box and that's that.

Anyway, maybe this is all interesting but useless information.

I'm personally really interested in the flash-based Camcorders... the
concept is pretty cool. But for some reason the engineers (Sanyo, Panasonic,
Samsung, others) are absultely clueless when it comes to format decisions. At
least your camcorder uses a standard format like MP4... I've had other Flash
Camcorders that used a proprietary format that required a custom media player
included to play.

It would be great if the CE engineers in Japan would take a harder look at
WMV or ASF format for the Flash Camcorders.

Last thought... do you know about Neptune.com for online video sharing? I
work for Neptune, and the Mediashare service accepts .MP4 files. You might
want to go to Neptune.com, sign up for a free trial, then use the Easy Upload
feature to upload .MP4 videos into Quicktime albums. Windows Media and
Quicktime play equally well on Neptune... we get tons of .MP4 files from the
new Apple iMovie software.

Good luck!


"ingobert" wrote:

> SANYO XACTI C4
.

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