Problem with mp4 and windows client, is there a better codec?

I recently rendered a test mp4 from final cut for use as parcel media with the following characteristics:



Basically, my problem is that the Windows client does not show the video correctly at all - it's black and white, distorted and has black strips running through it. On the mac, it looks fine.

EDIT: I realized I should mention - the movie plays fine on windows in quicktime player, just not in Second Life

Now, I realize that I should probably downsize to say 320x240, but for my tests I'd prefer to render more quickly, and I'm currently the only one suffering through the loading times (but it's not as bad as the rendering times if I downsize)

So before I start doing tons of rendering tests, I was wondering what codec is best to use with Second Life parcel media. I searched and found posts where people seemed to use H.264, so I am a bit puzzled - maybe second life only supports certain sizes, or certain codec settings?

If anyone has any ideas, or tips for rendering video (from Final Cut Studio 2 if possible) I would appreciate them.

I have a had good success with h.264 and other mpeg4 variations - especially now that Quicktime 7.1 is required to use video in SL. Used to be that many people would not have a recent enough version of QT to view mp4.

Odd that you can see the movie on your desktop and not in SL. Have you tried having someone else on a windows machine look at the video in-world? (i will volunteer if all your friends are on Mac) If they can watch it then you should probably try re-installing Quicktime and/or SL. I have seen some weird bugs in QT fixed with a re-install.


Trying to find one of my SL videos that is encoded in h.264. If I find one I will post it here for you to try, see if it works for ya...

Here is one that is encoded in another mpeg4 variation, for experimentation...

http://www.wallofgray.com/sl/OrgSym-BlobbyWaves.mov

A few other observations/opinion.

610x458 is a bit large, in my opinion. I almost always use 320x240 or 400x300 at the largest. SL is very good at stretching image.

Your data rate is pretty high. Everyone is SL does have broadband but I have found it's best to keep videos as small as possible. I usually aim for a file size of 3 or 4 Megabytes a minute. A lower resolution and lower frame rate (like 15FPS) would help keep the quality up while lowering the filesize. h.264 is does an amazing job of getting good quality from lower bitrates.

Well, I did a bit of experimenting - you're problem piqued my curiosity.

I had trouble playing h.264 video in-world as well. When I first tried playing it I got nothing but a black screen. Nada.

I noticed that after trying to play the video that the new Media Type setting in the Parcel Media tab was messed up. It was showing a blank entry instead of Movie or another valid setting. My Loop Media setting was also blanked out.

After specifically setting that to 'Movie' the h.264 video will play. Also, any further changes to that tab had no effect and the video plays fine. I also noticed that once the video was working I could log out and back in and it would play fine, until I changed the video settings again.

BTW - this was the case in both the standard client 1.19.1 and the RC client 1.20.4

I have noticed a few other glitches with that Media Type selector, and there have even been some other bug fixes related to it. I think that this is probably a bug and will file a JIRA report about it this evening.

Here's the file I am using to test. One of my nature vids converted to h.264 at 320x240, 15 FPS.

http://www.wallofgray.com/sl/PerpetuaStorm-Test.mp4

This doesn't really sound like the problem you are having, but I suppose they might be related. If nothing else you can use this video to test your set-up. If you do experiment some more, I'd be interested in hearing about the results.

I use this:

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_lite_codec_pack.htm