*.avi file won't play audio in MPEG Streamclip nor Quicktime

Hi all,

I have a Toshiba Camileo H30 cam recorder and am having trouble with how to view and edit these files on a mac. I've been researching for days and don't seem to be much closer to a solution... just a tad confused with all this talk of various codecs etc.

I've read elsewhere that the files need to be converted before they will be able to be edited in iMovie and was recommended MPEG Streamclip for this... but my movie clips don't play with any sound in Streamclip (and converted clips don't have sound either). To be honest I don't really know what I'm doing with converting... I've tried a few different things... but I really need to get the audio working before I even get that far!

No sound when I try to play them in Quicktime, either.

These are .avi files, and as far as I can gather, the video codec is H264 and the audio codec is mp4a.

I've installed Perian but it hasn't helped with the audio (before installing it I couldn't even get a visual for MPEG Stremclip or Quicktime!).

I really hope that there is an answer out there...! Any ideas on what I could try next would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Unfortunately, you have purchased one of the more Mac unfriendly camcorders out there - if it's new, after you get your video off, I'd strongly suggest to return it and get something more Mac friendly...

That said, you should probably try Handbrake ( HandBrake ) or ffmpegx ( ffmpegX a DVD, SVCD, VCD, CVD, VOB, DivX, XviD, H.264, PSP, iPod, MP4, MOV, FLV encoder for Mac OSX ) to try to transcode it into something that will be more Mac friendly.

Welcome to the forums.

There's no obvious reason why you wouldn't have sound using that format.

Apologies in advance for the stupid question but . . . does the movie have sound when you play it back on the camcorder or TV?

Assuming it does:
1. try and play the file in VLC
2. try Handbrake to convert the file

post back with your results

My only guess as to why it won't play is the nature of the audio in the AVI container (that camera stores H.264 video (which is an interesting choice because from what I understand, H.264 codec and avi container are not really a good match) and MP4A audio within the avi container which may not be compatible with Perian)

I'm thinking (as both you and I (mrplow) posted) transcoding with Handbrake or ffmpegx will hopefully work.

Thanks heaps guys,

I would take the camera back if I could, but we've had it for a while now. I thought it was fine because we can play standard resolution clips using VLC no problem... but it won't play HD clips properly - it goes all jerky and stops and starts. The sound is fine in VLC. I didn't even try to edit anything until a couple of weeks ago.

I downloaded Handbreak but when I try to open it, an error message appears telling me that it is "not supported on this architecture". Dunno what that means exactly...??

Then I downloaded ffmpegX... but for some strange reason I can't download the mpeg2enc binary that I need for it. The download link just takes me to a page of source code it looks like, and nothing happens.

???????

Ah-ha! Got the mpeg2enc binary to work. I'll just check out ffmpegX and see how it goes...

Ok, now I'm just confused.

I dropped a movie clip into ffmpegX and tried to encode it to DV format (is that the right one to use for iMovie?). It came up saying that the process failed:

Input #0, avi, from '/Users/dandetattersall/Movies/IMAG0076.AVI':
00:00:24.5, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 14633 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: h264, 1280x720, 29.97 fps
Stream #0.1: Audio: 0x00ff, 48000 Hz, stereo, 128 kb/s
Output #0, dv, to '/Users/dandetattersall/Movies/IMAG0076.AVI.ff.avi.dv':
Stream #0.0: Video: dvvideo, 720x480, 29.97 fps, q=2-9, 25000 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, stereo, 1536 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
Unsupported codec (id=0) for input stream #0.1
Sat May 21 14:31:40 NZST 2011

Interesting. Well, I should have glanced at your system specs - I wouldn't have recommended handbrake - it's Intel platform only I believe at this point. It also looks like you were planning to transcode to dv? Personally, I would have transcoded to an H.264 mp4 file because your settings convert your HD footage to SD footage - but that said, it would appear that according to the error you got, the audio codec used in the AVI file is unsupported.

I can't find the review/specs again that I had found the audio codec, so it's possible where that other review was that the audio specs that they stated were wrong (H.264 on the video I know is right because I've found it on every review including Toshibas website) and the audio may be in some codec that just isn't well supported (which wouldn't surprise me)

I don't know the full limitations of the PowerPC Mac, but it may have something to do with the H.264 encoding that's giving it grief - I did some quick searches and it seems many people have problems with playback of 1080i H.264 on G5 processors which may be why VLC is struggling. You could always attempt to use VLC to transcode it (since it will play the audio and video, albeit not smoothly but for transcoding it doesn't have to play it back in real time)

Thanks Nethfel
I've got VLC playing the HD clips fine now - I didn't realize I had an old version (duh). Yay! One step closer.
What settings do I use to transcode it to something that iMovie can work with??
I'll have a play and see what happens...

What version of iMovie do you currently have installed?

version 7.1

I don't really know what I'm doing with transcoding. I tried using the VLC "Streaming/exporting wizard" (skipped the transcode part because I have no idea what settings to use) and selected "MOV" for the encapsulation format. The resulting file opens in Quicktime but now it gives a black screen... but with perfect audio! Selecting "MPEG 4 / MP4" gave the same result.
I have tried messing around with various transcoding options but with even less success.

What should I try?