Quicktime movie on site has sound but no picture on PCs.

[Lau]

I'm trying to put a movie on my website. It's on Quicktime, and I have set it up that when you click on the link, it will open in a new smaller window, with the control bar at the bottom. On a Mac, you click play on the control bar and it plays. I am now proud of myself

However, , on a PC it displays an error message (apparently) then plays with sound but a grey screen instead of a picture, even if the viewer has Quicktime. Why is this? And what can I do?

If I have to, I can put a link to a Windows Media file as well, but that would be a bit messy, and the people I would expect to be viewing it should have Quicktime. I just have a feeling something's slightly wrong with the above setup, and you knowledgeable folk will know what's going on.

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[rainman::|:|]

What's the format of the movie? AVI? MPG? You may need to examine the formats of both the soundtrack and videotrack, to see if the video requires a special codec to play.

 

[Lau]

Ah, Ok. It's a .mov file. That sounds suspiciously Mac friendly. I presume .avi might be better?

 

[kineticpast]

Ah, Ok. It's a .mov file. That sounds suspiciously Mac friendly. I presume .avi might be better?

No, .mov is just Quicktime's standard file format/extension. The extension won't be the problem, especially since you've already confirmed that the file is being read by playing sound.

The problem will be the video codec you've used to compress the video, do you know what you've used? If you don't, open the file in Quicktime and hit Command-I, in the new window find the format. Then post that here.

Most likely the PC user (I presume you aren't the one doing the testing since you don't know what the error message says) simply is using an old version of Quicktime and needs to upgrade.

This would have been easier to diagnose had we had a link to the Quicktime file.

[edit]Is this for the Trifle video? If so I think your tester just needs to upgrade to at least version 6 (the latest version for Windows, not including the Public Preview of 7).[/edit]

 

[Lau]

Thanks for your help, guys. The file can be found at here , but the Get info attachment will hopefully help. Thanks.

 

[Lau]

Sorry - slow reply. If it's an upgrade thing, well, than that's fine! As long as the people who are up to date can see it that's ok. I need to find an up to date tester now!

 

[Lau]

Ok, just checked on a PC, and its Quicktime is up to date, but won't play it. The error comes up saying "QuickTime is missing software required to perform this operation. Unfortunately, it is not available on the QuickTime server"

I googled this response, but most seem to think that it's due to running Windows 95, or an older Netscape browser, and the PC I just used has XP, Quicktime 6 and as basically all up to date, I think.

Firefox crops up on Google as causing this problem, but I tried it in IE, but it still doesn't play, although that error message doesn't appear. My dad (who alerted me to the fact it wasn't working) presumably tried it in AOL and alos had sound but no picture. Not that I particularly care whether it works on AOL, but it does prove it's a browser wide problem.

 

[iGav]

I googled this response, but most seem to think that it's due to running Windows 95, or an older Netscape browser, and the PC I just used has XP, Quicktime 6 and as basically all up to date, I think.

Lau, you need QuickTime 7 to view H.264 content.

Depending on the type of content, change your codec to something like Sorenson Video 3 you'll take a size hit, but it should work fine.

Hope that helps.

 

[Lau]

Lau, you need QuickTime 7 to view H.264 content.

Depending on the type of content, change your codec to something like Sorenson Video 3 you'll take a size hit, but it should work fine.

Hope that helps.

Thanks iGav, I didn't even realise it was H.264. Although that would make sense. I'll give it a try, and update the thread as to whether it works or not. Ta!

 

[Lau]

Have been meaning to convert the video for ages and I finally did it last night - Sorenson Video 3 codec works fine. Thanks to everyone for their help.