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H.264 video won't play

Posted: 29 Jul 2005 17:45
by sirsean
I've encoded some movies using the x264 codec in HandBrake (H.264/AAC/MP4). They files open and play perfectly in Quicktime, but VLC has problems. The audio works fine, but there is no video. No video window opens, and the only enabled option in the Video window is "Full Screen" which opens to a black screen. The "Video Track" submenu opens and displays "Disable" and "Track 1" (the latter is checked).

Changing around all the video settings doesn't make any difference.

I've tested this using VLC 0.8.2 on OS X 10.4 ... on both a Mac Mini and an iMac G5. Exact same behavior.

What might be the problem here?

Posted: 29 Jul 2005 22:35
by mguertin
x264 is not 100% up to snuff with the quicktime H.264 as of yet ... some stuff works some stuff doesn't. I don't have a better answer than that but from what I've tried that's what I've found to date ...

Posted: 30 Jul 2005 01:31
by The DJ
The biggest problem is that VLCs version of H264 is not finished, not very optimized, and not Altivec accelerated yet. So basically you need like dual processor 3Ghz G5's to decode larger H264 movies in VLC atm.

Posted: 30 Jul 2005 09:58
by Guest
I look forward to it's completion..

the current cvs previews of mplayer for osX do an abysmal job of decoding it.. i'd estimate only half of it is actually being rendered (h.264 should NOT look like ASF =] )

VLC has always been the best ^^

Posted: 30 Jul 2005 10:19
by plasma
The biggest problem is that VLCs version of H264 is not finished, not very optimized, and not Altivec accelerated yet. So basically you need like dual processor 3Ghz G5's to decode larger H264 movies in VLC atm.
I have 0.8.2(test 3) and a dual 2.7 ghz g5.. it plays on slightly less than 2.5 ghz of power, but jittery because of the vfr =).. very crisp rendering though.

If i'm guessing correctly, current versions are h.264 disabled by default?

Posted: 30 Jul 2005 15:00
by dionoea
all VLC versions have h264 decoding as long as they're compiled with ffmpeg (which is always true)

most VLC versions have h264 encoding (i think 0.8.2 for Mac OS X has it)

Posted: 31 Jul 2005 08:05
by plasma
i will do further testing by trying .mov format h264 on it, but more current builds of 0.8.2 fail to render 264 from mkv files on X.4.2 (and often times crashes occur).

(sorry if this is a little redundant..) :oops: