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What Profiles and Levels for QuickTime H.264 files does the Cablecast support?
Can anyone tell me what H.264 profiles and levels are supported on the Cablecast? Does Cablecast depend on the decoder installed by Quicktime? Or does it have its own decoder built-in?
Our new Cablecast SX2 plays MOV's encoded in Quicktime Pro, which have Baseline profile, Level 3.0. I haven't been able to get anything else to play. (No video, and the audio plays for only a fraction of each second.) I've mainly been trying with specs that fit into Main profile, Level 5.1. I'm just trying to find a good balance between visual quality and filesize, and Main@5.1 is better than Baseline@3.0. But we can live with the latter if necessary....
If it helps, I've been using Quicktime Pro 7.3 and 7.4. Our Cablecast Release Version is 5.2.0 Build 14, and the Database Version is 5.0.0.
Thanks,
Curtis
Our new Cablecast SX2 plays MOV's encoded in Quicktime Pro, which have Baseline profile, Level 3.0. I haven't been able to get anything else to play. (No video, and the audio plays for only a fraction of each second.) I've mainly been trying with specs that fit into Main profile, Level 5.1. I'm just trying to find a good balance between visual quality and filesize, and Main@5.1 is better than Baseline@3.0. But we can live with the latter if necessary....
If it helps, I've been using Quicktime Pro 7.3 and 7.4. Our Cablecast Release Version is 5.2.0 Build 14, and the Database Version is 5.0.0.
Thanks,
Curtis
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Curtis,
I can check when I get back to the office. I know, as you mentioned that Baseline@3.0 should work. Beyond that, I will need to do a little research.
The other tip I can give you is that the video needs to be either 720x486 or 720x480. For h.264 and mp4 there are no exceptions to this rule.
If you want to email me a file, i would be happy to take a look at it on our end and see what I can find.
I’m unsure
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Inappropriate?Thanks for your prompt reply, Brandon. :-)
Thanks for the reminder about frame size, etc. I have been using 720x480 throughout, with the only changes being bitrates and all those cryptic H.264 encoding parameters (e.g. frameref, bframes, b_pyramid, vbv's, subq, etc.)
I upgraded my QuickTime versions to 7.5 on the Cablecast as well as on my editing workstation. I've also been running more tests. Main@3.0 and Main@5.1 do not work at all for me. I tried with bitrates from around 100 kbps up to 4 Mbps. All of my test files play just fine in QuickTime.
I noticed that when creating an MP4 with QuickTime Pro, there was an option to specify Main or Baseline. But there was no way to do this when creating a MOV directly. So I created an MP4 with Main (it came out as Level 3.0 by the way; the GUI had no way to specify this) and then remuxed it into MOV before testing it on the Cablecast. But still no go.
One correction: I said before that video didn't work at all with Main. My goof... :-( It turns out that my CG/DSK unit was turned off while testing with that profile, so no video was getting through the pipeline. When I turned it on, I was getting some video, but only at about 1 frame/sec.
Anyway, it's as if the Cablecast IS able to decode files using Main, but nowhere near fast enough to do it in realtime. But Baseline@3.0 works fine, even to the upper end of the bitrates I tested.
Unless there's an upgrade to the Cablecast software that enables Main decoding, I think I answered my question about Profiles and Levels. But all the same, it would be great to have a confirmation from TRMS about which ones are officially supported. :-)
Thanks,
Curtis -
Inappropriate?Did tightrope ever get anything definitive on h.264? Like whether main works? CABAC or other encoding? AAC or PCM? It's a guessing game trying to get this to work consistently.
I’m frustrated
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