H.264

[janus85]

Hi there,
I'm considering encoding my videos in H.264 (the latest compressor from Quicktime) because the quality's so damn good. However this is only viewable with Quicktime 7, which is relatively recent and not a lot of people will have it. Do you think this is a bad idea?

-Janus

[Zarxrax]

Windows users abhore quicktime. If you want to use h.264, I would recommend using x264 or nerodigital, which can store it in a proper mp4 container.

[trythil]

Hi there,
I'm considering encoding my videos in H.264 (the latest compressor from Quicktime)

H.264 isn't "from Quicktime", no matter what Steve Jobs' reality distortion field spews out. H.264 is just a compression standard with multiple implementations; Zarxrax listed two.

If you can use the Quicktime H.264 compressor to produce output in an MP4 container, that should be okay: the Quicktime player can read those, as can a wealth of other tools.

[sysKin]

Quicktime does use .mp4 format for its h264, so in theory you can just use it. However, I strongly recommend against it - both for encoding (quality is crap) and for decoding (player is crap).

[pfc]

Well, as VLC can decode H.264 in a QuickTime container, (I'm reasonably sure) Windows users don't have to install QuickTime. I'd say go ahead with encoding in H.264. I've had quite reasonable results playing around with QuickTime's H.264 encoder.

[Purge]

i wouldn't recommend it just yet - i personally spent ages findng a codec to support it in WMP cause i dont like VLC.

Its your vid though you should do want you want.

[trythil]

i wouldn't recommend it just yet - i personally spent ages findng a codec to support it in WMP cause i dont like VLC.

How did you "spend ages"? ffdshow is readily available, and recent builds handle it just fine.

[janus85]

thanks everyone, I think it's probably best that I don't move on to H.264 just yet, for compatibility reasons. I might just use good old sorenson, as it seems widely compatible with most players, and handles sequences where there is a lot of movement rather well - a quality that i find other codecs like divx lack. It's just hard to tell what to use, especially as i work on a mac and i know most of the people who watch my videos will be on windows.

Anyway thanks, u've all been really helpful

[janus85]

hmm now i'm having second thoughts again lol. Sorenson's quite a nice codec but it makes the picture too dark, and this is only furhter increased by VLC. And i'm on a mac laptop and pc screens are significantly darker anyway so u probably wouldnt even be able to see anything! Ah decisions, decisions.

[trythil]

thanks everyone, I think it's probably best that I don't move on to H.264 just yet, for compatibility reasons. I might just use good old sorenson, as it seems widely compatible with most players

No it isn't.