Mac & PS3

As a mac user, I found it pretty frustrating that the PS3 does not currently support .mov files. When it comes to this problem, I am torn; on the one hand, I feel sony should introduce support for .mov, but on the other I sympathize with them for apple's use of the .mov format- blatantly disregarding the 'soon to be industry standard' and the 'i33t'ness of the format for the consumer market.

But I digress. As with many tech reviewers, I want to offer a solution to this dilemma, otherwise what use would this article be? The answer can be found in Quicktime Pro. Although this solution is not cost free, the productivity one can gain from Quicktime Pro is priceless, so head on over to the apple website and buy yourself a copy. Besides, here on the creativeone.tv, those who are against supporting the mecha that is apple are few and far between and Quicktime Pro can only be another step toward Apple Nibanna.

Now you have your copy, the solution is simple. Quicktime Pro offers a .mov to mp4 pass through method that provides lossless conversion. Think of it as reorganizing the zeros and ones of a .mov file to fit in a .mp4 wrapper. It is the same PS3 supported h.264 data after all, just in a different package that the PS3 can't read. The only downside of this method is that the .mov file must use the h.264 codec, the standard deliverable codec of today. Codecs like DV-PAL etc will not work, but for the standard consumer this will not be a problem.

Simple steps are laid out below.

1. Take you .mov file with standard h.264 compression and open it up in Quicktime Pro.
2. Open the file menu and select 'export'.
3. A dialog will appear, from which select 'Movie to MPEG-4' and hit options.
4. Another dialog will open up, from which select 'passthrough' under the video format selection box.

OK it all and save to a desired destination. On my standard macbook, a 4 minute clip doesn't even take 10 seconds.

It is that easy, but if you didn't catch it, you can watch it below;

If you are on a tight shoe string, MPEG streamclip offers a free alternative to QTP, but the conversion is not as fast and is not lossless as every frame is essentially re-encoded- unlike the passthrough method which just changes the wrapper without loosing any quality or resolution. You can check out MPEG Streamclip here. I won't go into details on how to use MPEG streamclip, but if you need any help, contact me.

If you have any questions, message me on youtube and I will happily try to help to the best of my ability.

I would also like to take the time to say thank you to Mr DeFranco for allowing me to become a part of this community. I can't say exactly what I plan to bring to the table, as I honestly don't know. I just know I am a student film-maker living in a tech filled, hectic world and my blogs and videos will reflect that.

Speak to you all soon....

-Adam

Tech Channel

Short Film Portfolio 

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Comments

[Dylan]

This is really cool! Thanks Adam!

[drbuk]

This is very useful, and should have no problems when Snow Leopard comes out, as Snow Leopard will include Quick Time Pro for free, with much more features and functionality, e.g. free, screen recording.

[Hutch]

There's a free program named MPEG Streamclip from www.squared5.com that does this for free.

[Adam Lawson]

Thanks for the comments all.

DRBUK- I didn't know that, but kudos to apple for making that move, that will turn the mac into a even more professional platform out of the box, which is obviously good.

Hutch- I am going to have to disagree with you there as MPEG Streamclip doesn't offer a passthrough method. At least the version I have doesn't. It does, however, offer .mov to .mp4 conversion for free, but it is not lossless and it is not as fast. It actually re-encodes every frame, whereas Quicktime Pro does not- QTP essentially changes the extension and that is it, no encoding is actually taking place.

However, I will add an appendix to the end of the article offering the free alternative.

Thanks all

-Adam

[Hutch]

Well, I didn't elaborate. Nonetheless, it's free, it works, and one less hurdle.