importing MOV (quickitime) files

erichrudolph wrote on 4/17/2014, 1:19 AM
I have been at Microsoft for 16 years. I used to work with Vegas back when it was Sonic Foundry, and even back THEN, MOV importing was abominable. Sadly, embarrassingly, it still is today. when I look online, I see tons of bad/misleading advice. Such as: Roll back your Quicktime to version X.X. Use quicktime Lite. Install ffdshow. No, install ffdshow instead. transcode your MOV files to H264 first. Try importing them through avisynth. Use the 32-bit version, not the 64-bit version. Try praying to Buddha.

All this blows chunks. Super, duper, improfessional of Vegas to not provide a MOV parser. It's just a RIFF format, after all, and it's been SIXTEEN YEARS (or so). Damn it, hire a contractor and parse the file, will ya? My MOV file just contains MP4 flavor video anyhow. Why are you relying on a quicktime component to crack my file open? And if you (Sony) are bound to some licensing agreement, why hasn't a 3rd party written a Vegas Plugin for MOV files yet?

My aneurism aside, what DOES it take for Vegas to crack a file open, anyhow? does it use DirectShow, VFW, or a plugin to open up a MOV file? If I have to, I'll write the darned cracker myself. Or, buckle down and buy Premiere.

Grrr. I had opening MOV files working for about 5 minutes, once, in Vegas 11. Now, I can't remember how I got it to work. I'm running Windows 8.1 x64, latest quicktime, latest Vegas Studio 13, x86 and x64. Nothing works for opening MOV files.

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 4/17/2014, 6:32 AM
Eagerly awaiting your (legal) plugin . . .
videoITguy wrote on 4/17/2014, 10:38 AM
did you work at Microsoft long enough to get development of Windows 8.1 out of the box? Now there lies the problem, and not only with Quicktime references!
erichrudolph wrote on 4/17/2014, 4:30 PM
I don't work in the Windows division any longer, but I do know my file formats and what is in a .MOV file. It's just a RIFF container. Supposedly fairly simple to parse, at least 15 years ago it was.

I'm not the biggest Windows fan - but I do think it's better than anything else out there for a desktop OS, plus out of all the Windows I've worked with, I'd say 8.1 is probably the fastest and most stable. I loved Windows 7, but I think 8.1 has the edge on it for stability and speed.
videoITguy wrote on 4/17/2014, 7:32 PM
Then as a Win developer you are no doubt aware of the annual warfare between Apple and Microsoft - to keep Quicktime alive on the Win OS. It happened every evolution between Win 95 and present day.

During the beta releases of Windows 8 - the Quicktime catch-up factor was the worst it ever has been.
musicvid10 wrote on 4/17/2014, 8:31 PM
" It's just a RIFF format,"

Can you direct us to your source of information, please?
In recent memory, I've never heard QTFF and RIFF mentioned in the same breath.
In fact, I just searched all 442 pages of the Apple QTFF official spec, and RIFF doesn't show up once.

QTFF, like MPEG-4 Part 10, supports quite a few things that RIFF will never support natively, owing to its vintage. Chunks are chunks and atoms are atoms.
B-frames, VFR video, VBR audio, are basic unsupported functions in RIFF; there are many more.

But what we're really interested in is seeing your decoding libraries in action!
The way to gain credibility here is by dishing some substance; everyone has a CV . . .
;?o
erichrudolph wrote on 4/18/2014, 8:46 AM
container formats are just that - containers. They're all fairly simple to crack. Parsing what's in them is the hard part. Anyhow, it's not MY **** job to do this, it's "Sony"'s job (I have no idea which subdivision is responsible for Vegas any longer, I used to be on friendly terms with the whole Sonic Foundry team). It's not as if .MOV (with H264 in it is an obscure format, about 50% of every digital camera I've owned captures to it). as I said before, it's time for Vegas to fix this really annoying issue.

If I wasn't so behind on my day-to-day grind at MS, I would definitely crank out a plugin. Shouldn't be hard with so much open-source file-reading stuff on the market. Seems like somebody could poach a file reader from AviSynth?

I was part of the Quicktime Wars at Microsoft. I think we've sort of lost interest in "the format wars". Couldn't say for sure, but I think back then, MS was convinced it needed to dominate the format because that was where they'd get their cash stream from: encoding to Windows Media. Now, they've figured out that the cash is from HOSTING the files, not the encoding part. I could be wrong, but I don't see a lot of action with "wmv" needing to be king. since i'm not in the windows division, I don't hear a lot of the day to day stuff, but I'm not seeing a lot of action in that direction. What was and always is a problem is the encoding licensing restrictions. But not the container format stuff.
musicvid10 wrote on 4/18/2014, 10:04 AM
Sony can't use open source /GPL libraries, partly because of their licensing agreements with commercial vendors. It's their choice, so maybe that's where you should take your objections. None of that stops you from writing a plugin under whatever license you choose. If it worked, you could probably make some money with it.

Your considerable factual errors aside, there's no one here who doesn't wish for better native QT support in Vegas, and Sony is listening.

That said, I'm bowing out of the discussion before you change your story yet a third time.
Please feel free to blow as much hot air as you like, within the terms of service of course . . .
Best.
videoITguy wrote on 4/18/2014, 10:08 PM
I too spent a lot of time on the Microsoft Campus and I can say the thrust of building things like .wmv and the Windows Media Authoring initiative had very little to do with the Quicktime wars. Those efforts were so far apart it is hard to even think of them in the same context.

Microsoft managed to pursue a lot blind alleys - recall FrontPage or the Windows 2000 paint and vector program that was going to wipe out Corel Draw?

The Quicktime was a lot of huffing and puffing over whether it could dominate the new media markets as it eventually did...poor folks at Microsoft were left whistling dixie in the dust....