To whom it may concern:
Raw .MOV files cannot be played in majority of media players, despite being h.264 files which are supported by players. It seems that H264 content is readable by media players but .MOV wrapper cannot be read.
I found a way to demultiplex the files (without transcoding them, so no quality loss) so they can be played by, for example, TVIX media player.
I found this to work:
1. Download Avdemux, it's a free editor software (as in freeware).
2. Open your .MOV file. It will say it's using B-frames as reference. Press "Yes".
3. In lower left "format" drop-box, chose MKV (leave audio/video dropboxes on "copy")
4. Press save, name file "filename.mkv".
Avidemux will demultiplex audio/video streams and them multiplex them again into Matroska container without touching the actual compressed content.
Now copy this to your media player and view the file. Observe that older players might have problems viewing 45Mbit/s H.264 stream so they might stutter. Same will happen if you let it stream it from mapped drive trough network. So best bet is to place it onto local mediaplayer harddrive and have modern media player.
I hope someone will find this helpful.
P.S. I also used Avidemux to decompress my 720p50 H.264 footage, downscale it to SD, apply slight sharpening/grading and dump it into raw YUV for further editing in your NLE software of choice. This generates lossless SD PAL master of very high quality. Files tend to be on hefty side but it's nothing a decent RAID-0 array cannot handle.
Raw .MOV files cannot be played in majority of media players, despite being h.264 files which are supported by players. It seems that H264 content is readable by media players but .MOV wrapper cannot be read.
I found a way to demultiplex the files (without transcoding them, so no quality loss) so they can be played by, for example, TVIX media player.
I found this to work:
1. Download Avdemux, it's a free editor software (as in freeware).
2. Open your .MOV file. It will say it's using B-frames as reference. Press "Yes".
3. In lower left "format" drop-box, chose MKV (leave audio/video dropboxes on "copy")
4. Press save, name file "filename.mkv".
Avidemux will demultiplex audio/video streams and them multiplex them again into Matroska container without touching the actual compressed content.
Now copy this to your media player and view the file. Observe that older players might have problems viewing 45Mbit/s H.264 stream so they might stutter. Same will happen if you let it stream it from mapped drive trough network. So best bet is to place it onto local mediaplayer harddrive and have modern media player.
I hope someone will find this helpful.
P.S. I also used Avidemux to decompress my 720p50 H.264 footage, downscale it to SD, apply slight sharpening/grading and dump it into raw YUV for further editing in your NLE software of choice. This generates lossless SD PAL master of very high quality. Files tend to be on hefty side but it's nothing a decent RAID-0 array cannot handle.