Comments on: What’s the difference between a codec and a container or wrapper?

By: Philip

Philip — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:31:35 +0000

You cannot have a codec without a container or wrapper – you need both. In many cases, particularly QuickTime, the container can hold so much more than just video and audio codecs – filters, transitions, Virtual Reality objects and scenes, interactivity etc. The MPEG-4 container is also capable of a lot of this as well (since it’s heavily based on QT) but not much has been implemented in MPEG-4.

Philip

By: Sophie

Sophie — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:22:16 +0000

What does a “wrapper” or “container” do? It sounds like the codec is the most important thing. Why do we have this step of codec and then wrapper?

By: Philip

Philip — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:28:08 +0000

Easiest way to find out about Philip is to google Philip Hodgetts! All questions are welcome.

By: Rick Adams

Rick Adams — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:48:44 +0000

I’m sorry, I stumbled on this site doing a google search. After reading a couple of articles I realize this is a wonderful resource, but where am I? Who is Phillip? Can old people ask dumb questions?

Thanlks

By: Philip

Philip — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:40:58 +0000

Unfortunately just knowing it is a “QuickTime Movie” doesn’t much help. We know the container, but have no clues as to the codec. You would need to find software that can read the file you have (and without knowing what codecs are used for video and audio I can’t help) then you have to encode that footage to MPEG-2 for a DVD, then you have to actually author a DVD – it’s more than just MPEG-2 files on a DVD disc.

Philip

By: Martin

Martin — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:06:59 +0000

Hi, Philip.

Thanks for tackling the container v. codec question. I’m a non-technical person wrestling with format conversion in order to make a half-decent DVD of holiday footage using OEM or freeware authoring apps.

I’ve got original clips in QuickTime (.mov) and one program that seems not to like the audio stream (a Sonic branded version of Roxio’s MyDVD Plus) and an Open Source program that can’t “see” most of the files I’ve loaded into it (DVD Flick, source files converted to MPEG2 PAL DVD-compliant files using SUPER).

So much for “I’ll just make a DVD of my holiday videos…”!!

Martin.

By: Andreas

Andreas — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 07:03:27 +0000

Hello Philip,

thanks a lot. Thats what I will do.

Andreas

By: Philip

Philip — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:58:39 +0000

QuickTime is a very forgiving technology. Final Cut Pro, being a video only application, is a lot less forgiving. Because QT has a DV codec it reads the AVI and plays it (Perian would do that for DivX and a lot of other formats). However, FCP is not optimized for AVI at all – pretty much you’ll need to render more often than not. The message you’re getting is to process the file to a QT movie that FCP can optimize for playback.

And that is absolutely what you must do. AVI files, regardless of codec, won’t perform well in FCP.

Philip

By: Andreas

Andreas — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:32:09 +0000

Hello,

thanks a lot for your feedback. Inside the AVI wrapper is a DV file. It plays fine in the timeline of FCP but FCP comes up with an error message saying I should use the media manager.

I do have Perian installed. I am not sure if that is the reason why it does play.

The other thing I have tried is converting to DV using VisualHub.

Thanks for your feedback
Kind regards
Andreas

By: Philip

Philip — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 06:08:02 +0000

It would repack as a QuickTime envelope but with the same codec unless you specifically exported to a different codec – one that was more natively supported in FCP. FCP will play non-native files in the Viewer, which is just a QuickTime viewer really, but when they go into a Sequence they’ll need rendering or will play back with reduced quality or frame rate.

If you can get the file to open in QuickTime Player with Perian, then export to DV/DVCPRO or to DVPRO50 for a bit higher quality on the intermediate. If you know the codec of your sequence, then export to that format. (For example, export to an Avid codec if going to an Avid system.)

Philip