"mp4 plugin discarded-no moov box" error

[John Galt Jr.]

Greetings all. Sorry if this has been covered but I did lots of reading and did several searches around here as well as all over the net- for the solution to this problem and just can't seem to find anything concrete. When trying to play a movie file designated ".mov" from my Pentax Optio camcorder, Quicktime gives me "Error opening movie" and VLC returns "mp4: MP4 plugin discarded (no moov box)"

The file plays fine on the camcorder but this damn "no moov box error" thing on VLC- which I use constantly- is driving me nuts- I can't find anything helpful- just several unanswered comments complaining about the same problem occuring to others and certainly no precise solutions.

Help please! TIA

OSX 10.4.9 on TiBook G4 667
VLC 0.8.6b (app & prefs replaced)
All housekeeping on the Mac up to date.

[Teetrinker]

If VLC and QuickTime can't play your mov file it is probably broken. A moov box/atom is needed in a mov/mp4 file.
Open the mov file with a hex editor and search for the moov box/atom, if you can't find one, you file is faulty. Here a sample screenshot of an hex editor with the found moov box:

[John Galt Jr.]

[quote="Teetrinker"]If VLC and QuickTime can't play your mov file it is probably broken. A moov box/atom is needed in a mov/mp4 file.
Open the mov file with a hex editor and search for the moov box/atom, if you can't find one, you file is faulty.


Thank you so much for the quick response but I still need a translation. Moov box? Atom? Can anyone please answer the question in plain language without any buzzwwords standing in for clarity? There is nothing broken about the file. It plays on the device, perfectly, and it copies cleanly to the computer from both the SD card and via hard wire, and when copied back to the card it again plays on the camcorder.

Exactly what does the error I'm getting from VLC mean? How does an "mp4 plugin" get discarded- especially since I never did such a thing, and how do I replace it?

[Teetrinker]

...There is nothing broken about the file. It plays on the device, perfectly, and it copies cleanly to the computer from both the SD card and via hard wire, and when copied back to the card it again plays on the camcorder.

That your camcorder is able to play the file doesn't mean that the file is a valid QuickTime format file (mov)

Can you upload the the problematic file somewhere?

Exactly what does the error I'm getting from VLC mean? How does an "mp4 plugin" get discarded- especially since I never did such a thing, and how do I replace it?

The "mp4 plugin" get discarded, because it isn't able to find the needed information to decode the audio/video streams inside the file. The needed information are normally stored inside the not found moov box.
The "mp4 plugin" isn't able to do anything without this information, so it is discarded.
VLC use it build in plugins. You can't replace the mp4 plugin by an other one.

[John Galt Jr.]

Thanks a lot Teetrinker for your patience in answering my questions. The thing that is most puzzling about this problem is that the file- as it comes from the camera- IS a .mov, or at least it says it is! Aren't all .mov's the same and thereby compatible with QuickTime and VLC too?

[Teetrinker]

Thanks a lot Teetrinker for your patience in answering my questions. The thing that is most puzzling about this problem is that the file- as it comes from the camera- IS a .mov, or at least it says it is! Aren't all .mov's the same and thereby compatible with QuickTime and VLC too?

VLC and QuickTime support the QuickTime file format(mov) ( http://developer.apple.com/documentatio ... F/qtff.pdf ). The QuickTime file format is the container. Inside this container can be some audio/video formats which are not supported by VLC or maybe QuickTime.

But here the problem seems to be the container. The container seems to miss an importend part - the moov box.
So how does it come this box is missing? A camcorder writes this box at the end of recording. Did the camcorder run out of storage space? Did the camcorder run out of power(battery) at recording? Or is the mov file format implementation of your camcorder broken?

But to be sure, where the problem is, a sample could help.

Do other mov files produced by your camcorder work with VLC?
Can you play mov files from here http://www.apple.com/trailers/ with vlc?

[John Galt Jr.]

OK - I've found that only by dl'ing via USB cable (vs. copying from the chip via SD card reader) appears to work. Files captured via "Image Capture" seem to open and play fine- however I've attached a .jpg and a .mov just to be sure. When you have the time I would appreciate it if you could tell me if the files appear to be healthy. Sorry for the quality of the files, but they should be sufficient for test purposes. Thanks again.

Perhaps I can return the favor of your time in my area of expertise someday- I'm an ardent audiophile/vintage audio collector.

http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x217 ... GP0240.jpg