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I installed QT7, and it can play the video. Anyone know where to find its codecs and where to copy them to in QTX to make QTX use them?

I did some basic searching and digging in /Library/QuickTime and ~/Library, but it didn't help.

I also tested this video on a third machine, and it plays fine there too. The goal is to make this video editable in iMovie. It used to work, then it stopped working a month or so ago. I'm not sure if the video format changed, or if something on the laptop changed.

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I know you said you don't want to transcode, but the best option is transcoding.

Easy peasy: Use Handbrake. (Most people don't realize that it transcodes video files. They think it's just for ripping DVDs.)

Just leave the transcode job running overnight if the Mac is slow.

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There has to be another way. It used to work. It works on two other machines.

The other challenge is transcoding creates a lot larger files than the original. This is a shared family laptop, and there's not enough storage to deal with transcoding.

I managed to get iMovie to update. The Mojave version has a feature to check media compatibility. It says the media is supported.

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Going back to your original thread...

I grabbed another .mp4 file from a different source, and it plays fine. So It seems to be specific to videos from Twitch and this laptop. I compared codec versions between this and the other machine, and they're the same.

If it's just the one file, and a file with the same codecs works fine then it's probably corrupt. Some players can play corrupt video better than others.

Transcoding will either fix it or make a garbled file. If it gets garbled then the original was almost certainly badly corrupted.

You said you'd tried the file on different Macs. This Mac is slow? Transcode it on another Mac.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2021 09:21PM by Sarcany.

M A V I C, you’re old enough now to know better than to waste time tilting at windmills. I guarantee it would have taken your kid less time to figure out how to use VLC than you’ve spent chasing down a solution to this “problem.”

We’re supposed to get wiser as we get older, pal.

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It is what it is.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2021 10:06PM by N-OS X-tasy!.

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Sarcany
Going back to your original thread...

I grabbed another .mp4 file from a different source, and it plays fine. So It seems to be specific to videos from Twitch and this laptop. I compared codec versions between this and the other machine, and they're the same.

If it's just the one file, and a file with the same codecs works fine then it's probably corrupt. Some players can play corrupt video better than others.

Transcoding will either fix it or make a garbled file. If it gets garbled then the original was almost certainly badly corrupted.

You said you'd tried the file on different Macs. This Mac is slow? Transcode it on another Mac.

It's any file from Twitch. When it was working, he would record a few a day and then edit. So it's not as simple as just resolving one file. He also doesn't have other Macs in the house he can use. Transferring 3-5 files a day, transcoding, transferring back, editing... is just a mess. It should just work. The same files on two other Macs play fine in QT (and thus are editable in iMovie.)

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N-OS X-tasy!
M A V I C, you’re old enough now to know better than to waste time tilting at windmills. I guarantee it would have taken your kid less time to figure out how to use VLC than you’ve spent chasing down a solution to this “problem.”

We’re supposed to get wiser as we get older, pal.

And I probably shouldn't have assumed you all know what Twitch is ;) He likes to make recordings while he plays video games, then edit them and upload to his YT channel. It's a continual thing. He's been bugging me for weeks to fix it. If he uses VLC to transcode, the drive will fill up. Plus when he's not on it, his sister or mom are on it so it can't be dog slow while they're using it.

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Stupid question: How are the exported files named?

If not ending in .m4v, try renaming one of the twitch files to end in .m4v and see if they'll play in your player of choice and open in iMovie.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2021 10:40PM by Sarcany.

.mp4 Changing it to m4v didn't help. Thanks for the idea.

I installed Resolve, the free version, and it can't edit or play the files either on this machine

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Quote
M A V I C

Quote
N-OS X-tasy!
M A V I C, you’re old enough now to know better than to waste time tilting at windmills. I guarantee it would have taken your kid less time to figure out how to use VLC than you’ve spent chasing down a solution to this “problem.”

We’re supposed to get wiser as we get older, pal.

And I probably shouldn't have assumed you all know what Twitch is ;) He likes to make recordings while he plays video games, then edit them and upload to his YT channel. It's a continual thing. He's been bugging me for weeks to fix it. If he uses VLC to transcode, the drive will fill up. Plus when he's not on it, his sister or mom are on it so it can't be dog slow while they're using it.

I know what Twitch is.

The scenario you described in your last post is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT than that described in your original post — now we’re talking about recording, editing and uploading, not just downloading and viewing.

Given all the other considerations and concerns you’ve cited, I think your best move is to upgrade the family MBA to an M1 model with some external storage added.

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It is what it is.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2021 10:54PM by N-OS X-tasy!.

Wait... Why hasn't he simply tied his Twitch account to YouTube to edit on YouTube?
[blog.hubspot.com]

Does he need to add effects?

...

Assuming that there's some reason for him not to edit on YouTube...

Can you describe the method that he's using to download the vids from Twitch? Does he use a particular app for this?

...Also:

N-OS X-tasy! is right. If the Mac is so underpowered for what he'd doing, you should be talking to him about how he's going to finance his own new Mac.

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Quote
N-OS X-tasy!

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M A V I C

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N-OS X-tasy!
M A V I C, you’re old enough now to know better than to waste time tilting at windmills. I guarantee it would have taken your kid less time to figure out how to use VLC than you’ve spent chasing down a solution to this “problem.”

We’re supposed to get wiser as we get older, pal.

And I probably shouldn't have assumed you all know what Twitch is ;) He likes to make recordings while he plays video games, then edit them and upload to his YT channel. It's a continual thing. He's been bugging me for weeks to fix it. If he uses VLC to transcode, the drive will fill up. Plus when he's not on it, his sister or mom are on it so it can't be dog slow while they're using it.

I know what Twitch is.

The scenario you described in your last post is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT than that described in your original post — now we’re talking about recording, editing and uploading, not just downloading and viewing.

Given all the other considerations and concerns you’ve cited, I think your best move is to upgrade the family MBA to an M1 model with some external storage added.

Yes, I wasn't fully explaining it. Sorry.

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Quote
Sarcany
Wait... Why hasn't he simply tied his Twitch account to YouTube to edit on YouTube?
[blog.hubspot.com]

Does he need to add effects?

...

Assuming that there's some reason for him not to edit on YouTube...

Can you describe the method that he's using to download the vids from Twitch? Does he use a particular app for this?

...Also:

N-OS X-tasy! is right. If the Mac is so underpowered for what he'd doing, you should be talking to him about how he's going to finance his own new Mac.

He goes into his account and hits download.

I know he adds extra effects in iMovie. It was editing just fine before a month or so ago.

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Restore from a backup from when it was working (...sorry).

Backup the current image on son's machine, then clone the OS from a working machine.

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In tha 360. MRF User Map

I think my next step is to do a clean install on an external drive and see if it has the same issue.

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M A V I C
The other challenge is transcoding creates a lot larger files than the original.

Just want to clear this up- transcoding by definition takes a file of one format and re-encodes it into another. It does not always mean larger!

One could easily take a file and make it smaller, trouble is the files we tend to consume and deliver are already encoded at low bitrates to conserve space, so to make it smaller you would need to lower the bitrate even more undoubtedly affecting the image quality.

Of course if you mean to edit a file it might make sense to transcode to a less compressed format do reduce the load on your CPU, but as you correctly noted this does increase the file size!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2021 10:40AM by mikebw.

Quote
mikebw

Quote
M A V I C
The other challenge is transcoding creates a lot larger files than the original.

Just want to clear this up- transcoding by definition takes a file of one format and re-encodes it into another. It does not always mean larger!

One could easily take a file and make it smaller, trouble is the files we tend to consume and deliver are already encoded at low bitrates to conserve space, so to make it smaller you would need to lower the bitrate even more undoubtedly affecting the image quality.

Of course if you mean to edit a file it might make sense to transcode to a less compressed format do reduce the load on your CPU, but as you correctly noted this does increase the file size!

I took the file, used VLC to transcode it to the same resolution, frame rate and bitrate as the source. I chose to copy the audio since it worked fine. The output file was nearly 3x as large. Both were h.264. I didn't dig in enough to figure out why it was that much bigger, but since this will be a repeated process and it works on other machines and it used to work on this machine, I'd like to avoid the transcoding process.

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M A V I C
I think my next step is to do a clean install on an external drive and see if it has the same issue.

try a new user account first, but a complete nuke & pave is what I'm thinking now.

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hal

Quote
M A V I C
I think my next step is to do a clean install on an external drive and see if it has the same issue.

try a new user account first, but a complete nuke & pave is what I'm thinking now.

It stopped working under his account. So I tried mine for the first time, and it didn't work there either. Do you think a completely new user account would make a difference?

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M A V I C
He goes into his account and hits download.

Through the Video Producer? Gotcha.

That should export native-resolution h.264 mp4 files... Hmmm... Has your son recently switched to a better camera or display or toggled a setting on Twitch to up the resolution of his streams?

What I'm wondering is whether the resolution of his files in h.264 is too great for QuickTime to render without the native video acceleration of a more recent Mac.

That would explain the black screens. If it's the lack of GPU that's the problem, sometimes, if you sit there watching for a minute or two, or jog/shuttle around, you can get it to render a frame.That's a sure sign that the processor simply isn't up to the job.

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Nailed it. So I ask him "what resolution do you record at?" and he says "you mean bitrate?" So we do a quick review of resolution and then he asks "why would that matter?" Then his face lights up. While he's creating a test video, he explains why he didn't think that made a difference and why he said he "didn't change anything."

But he did. Now he's learned a bit more. 720p will be just fine for him, he doesn't need 1080p.

Thanks for sticking with me on this. I had logged into Twitch to see if there were different download options. I didn't realize there were recording settings on the xbox.

I never got the 1080p video to show a single frame, even with jog/shuttle. It also never stuttered, just played audio perfectly with a solid black screen.

There's at least a dozen or so posts out there with people having this issue, not specific to Twitch. Most don't have answers, and the ones that do mention transcoding. Congrats on being the only one who has figured out it's a resolution & GPU power issue, not codec issue.

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So let me get this straight: You’re saying that your 2017 MBA doesn’t have the git-up-and-go to play back 1080p video? I get that it has the integrated GPU, but still... that seems more than a little lame. 1080p video has been a thing since at least the mid-2000s.

EDIT: MacTracker indicates that your MBA can handle up to 3840 x 2160 on an external display. That’s a LOT more pixels that 1920 x 1080.

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It is what it is.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2021 02:41PM by N-OS X-tasy!.

Quote
N-OS X-tasy!
So let me get this straight: You’re saying that your 2017 MBA doesn’t have the git-up-and-go to play back 1080p video? I get that it has the integrated GPU, but still... that seems more than a little lame. 1080p video has been a thing since at least the mid-2000s.

I missed that from the previous thread.

Yeah, a 2017 MBA would have native h.264 video acceleration.

Just misses h.265 support. (2018's "Amber Lake.") Sure it's not h.265/HEVC?

...If it's 1080p h.264 at 60fps or less and reasonable bitrate (What is the bitrate? Less than 3500kbps?) then it should be fine on a 2017, even a MBA. So, there is still a mystery: Why does the 720p video work when the 1080p video does not, with all other stuff being equal?

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Sarcany
Just misses h.265 support. (2018's "Amber Lake.") Sure it's not h.265/HEVC?

I was thinking the same. h.265 would kill it for sure.

Yes, it's h.264. VLC and QT both say that. 29.95 FPS. 1.98Mb/s.

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M A V I C
Yes, it's h.264. VLC and QT both say that. 29.95 FPS. 1.98Mb/s.

Yeah, at this point I got nuthin.

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