Convert H.264 Quicktime to PS3
Monday, March 16, 2009 at 2:06AM My Playstation 3 is the nexus of my home theater, largly because of how flexible it is in playing back various media formats. But the one format it won't play is the one I (sadly) work with most often: Quicktime .mov files.
Many Quicktime movies are encoded with H.264 for the video and AAC for audio. The PS3 eats these formats for breakfast, but only when they are wrapped in an MPEG-4 .m4v file. So I figured there must be a way to convert an H.264 Quikctime to .mv4 without re-encoding. Google did turn up a solution, but it was hard enough to find that I thought I'd post it here in case anyone else can use it.
Open your .mov file in Quicktime Pro (I presume you need Pro for this, although maybe not for long — anyway, if you have Final Cut Studio, you have Quicktime Pro). Select File >Export. In the resultant save dialog, select MPEG-4.
Then click on Options. Under the Video tab, select MP4 at the top, and for Video Format: Pass through.
For Audio, the settings are also that simple: Pass through.
Click OK and wait. The process is fairly speedy, since ostensibly no re-encoding is happening. The result will be a file with a .m4v extension that should be almost exactly the same size as your original Quicktime movie. Sneakernet it over to your PS3 on a thumbdrive and enjoy.
I've been doing this to preview my edits and color correction work on the Stunt People short (I revealed the title today on Twitter), but it also works great for movie trailers downloaded from Apple.
Reader Comments (24)
*sneakernet*
Stu, there are several ways to have your PS3 access media off the Mac directly. I use TVersity on my PC to serve up DLNA stuff to the PS3, and I think for the Mac there is something called "Medialink" (caveat; I have not tried it) but a Google search should leave you with aplenty to choose from...
/Z
Thanks Zap, I may try something like that with my Mac Mini media center.
Do you have the Mac Mini connected to the TV tho? Coz I play all that stuff straight off of that, no need to involve the PS3 for that if you have it wired in directly.
Btw, did you play with Boxee? Fun little thing to run on the Mini for sure, suddenly that tiny mac remote can be used for things! www.Boxee.tv
/Z
If you're using H.264 to preview your grading at home, how do you overcome the H.264 gamma bug present in QuickTime Pro/Compressor...?
(Btw, I use Medialink to connect my Mac to my PS3 and it works great!)
Its strange; I too only just last week got around to this after owning the ps3 for awhile. It is very useful.
Thanks for the post.
I'd be careful with installing a software like TVersity on a productive system, but for most users it works pretty well.
You can use a lot of freeware to bring MOV to an MP4 container, they are pretty close. For example YAMB. http://yamb.unite-video.com/
"If you're using H.264 to preview your grading at home, how do you overcome the H.264 gamma bug present in QuickTime Pro/Compressor...?"
This is what i want to know as well, and aside form the gamma issue, what about the compression, albeit minimal?
Check out this craziness.
I can take a quicktime H.264 with aac audio, simply rename it with a ".wmv" extension, and it plays on my xbox360 just fine.
Windows Media Player on my computer won't play it, but the xbox does.
A quicktime playing on the xbox, did something just freeze over?
stu
Do you have some method to have a calibrated tv? If you are reviewing your color corrections, how do you know what you see is color correct? What do you use to do calibration on a flat screen tv like a sony/samsung/lg?
I have Boxee on my Apple TV connected to the SONY. Just wished for more ram and a dual core processor on it though.
Do you think this would work for 5d mkII footage? I can try when I get home tonight.
Anyone know why some .mov files don't allow the "pass through" method? A lot of the quicktime movies of projects I'm working on won't do it. I use After Effects a lot, if that could be a reason.
Yeah, I have been doing this trick for almost 2 years now, I had blogged about it too. MP4 works on both my PS3 and XBoX360, so I need the files I download (usually from Vimeo) in MP4.
The PS3 should add both MOV, and streaming h.264 support though (for example, .mp4 rips from YouTube don't work -- even if you change their container MP4 version to "PSP MP4" format). Another format that needs support is the new version of WMA (PS3 has WMV support but not for the latest versions of the format). Not to mention some NTFS support to support files larger than 4 GBs.
Adding to that, some media file management would be nice (e.g. easily placing files into folders, because right now you can do that, but you have to re-type the album name for each video you got in the list). But yeah, overall, the PS3 is really strong in media format support (as it also supports mpeg2 HDV and AVCHD files to its h.264/DivX/WMV/mpeg2/mpeg1 power).
Please let us know the recommendations to stream media to the PS3.
So far the below have been mentioned.
- TVersity
- Medialink
I personally use TwonkyVision. It's commercial, but it's rock solild. TVersity is just too buggy for my taste.
Why not try the PS3 Media Server? http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com/
It's free! I just installed it on my MBP, it works great! Not only it can stream media to your PS3, it can also encode your media AND stream on the fly.
>Why not try the PS3 Media Server?
Because I have no reason to switch from TwonkyMedia, it has never failed me. It works with my XBoX360 too you see, officially.
Great post Stu! I've been looking for a work around for capturing straight to H.264 using QT pro and then uploading to iTunes/ iPods/ iPhones. This will do the trick! Unfortunately, I add in bug graphics using QT pro and thus, the pass through won't... pass through :( I think also there's an issue when you copy and paste in QT pro. If it's not a flattened movie, it will not work. Your trick does work very nicely for splitting .m4v's that are larger than 500mb into two bite size chunks for iTunes.
I tried this several times on my mac, but it keeps rendering the videos out as .mp4 extensions and my PS3 will not play them. I followed Stu's guide to the letter, and still no good. I am starting out with 1920x1080 23.976 fps video from FCP6, which is then Exported as an H.264 Quicktime .mov, which from that point I follow Stu's steps. What am I doing wrong???
Great idea which I will usually try, but right now I'm trying to export a movie with subtitles and my Pass Through option is grayed out (at least I assume that's why). So here's hoping my MP4 settings work, but my PS3 is a horribly finicky beast.
I use Eye Connect. Works just fine so far. Saves me from bringing my Mac to the TV. Turns it into a wireless media server. Thanks for the post.
Who out there can write us a applescript that we can have Compressor run after the compression to do this auto-magically?
By the way, this can be done more easily if you are using iMovie.
Instead of using Movie to MPEG 4, use Movie to Quicktime Movie, but just rename the file extension to .mp4!
MediaLink is the way to go! The new version transcodes videos on the fly! This means I install Media link - start the media link server - choose the server on my PS3 - start watching just about any video on my Mac. The videos look great too!
Better late than never. I have developed a Applescript droplet/applet that can re-package.mov files into the .mp4 container. Not necessary for PS3 use, but for easily uploading to the web.
If anyone is interested let me know.