Quicktime ignores x264 SAR? different, something, recently, original

andy

I've been using MeGUI recently experimenting with some x264 encodes. I am admittedly new to both x264 and MeGUI. My original source is 704x360 (cropped) and resized to 704x480 (anamorphic). I'm using the CE-QuickTime profile.

I've played with a variety of SAR settings and I believe a setting of 32x27 is correct. Regardless if it is or not, Quicktime always ignores this setting and plays the clip back as a 4:3 AR (or something close to 4:3). I've tried many different settings for SAR, but the result is always the same.

Any ideas?

Thanks

I take it the file is being played properly via DShow?

I take it the file is being played properly via DShow?

Yes it is

I guess then now you know why we call it CrapTime around here  If you want a non DShow player, give VLC a try, it's also available on different platforms.

Oh I already know how bad it is, but I was curious if this is a known issue or not.

Using a Quicktime compatible profile does have it's advantages (if not in quality) with distribution to non-techies with guaranteed playability being up there.

with distribution to non-techies with guaranteed playability being up there.

Whomever can download and install QT (which is considerably bigger by the way and tries to monopolize media playback just as most other players), could also download and install VLC, with the upside of getting a more capable player that can handle a whole bunch of formats QT cannot.. like DVD for instance, and all kinds of codecs and files QT cannot handle either. It's also self contained, and you don't even need an installer.. you could just zip up the whole thing and put onto a PC where you don't have rights to install software (say a company notebook, then still use it to watch DVDs on holidays, your way to work, etc).

You're quite right about VLC. Distributing it along with the .mp4 files is a good solution, especially as it's available without an installer. Thanks for the suggestion.

I suppose what I was originally after was an all out lowest common denominator approach, much like how MPEG-1 will play on virtually anything. VLC as opposed to Quicktime is a good compromise in that regard.

personally I don't use quicktime stand alone, I only use it when webpages have some streaming content. and in that regard vlc is rather weak, I mean it does integrate into the browser (firefox here) but the image is always stretched to the full size of the window and no controls are visible.

people don't use quicktime because it's good, they use it because it works out of the box for the least common divisor of movie quality and settings. I'm waiting for corecodec to finish up the browser plugin for firefox for their TCPMP, I'd love to have that instead of quicktime (though I don't know if it'll handle .mov containers, but most stuff quicktime is used for here is .mpg so I'm not too worried about that)