Xbox 360 Quicktime playback problems

[Joe Siegler]

Hey, I posted about this when the full trailer for Up first came out, but got no reply. I was hoping it would be addressed by now, but it hasn't. The problem is this:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/toystory3/hd/

Go to that link, and download the 1080p (or 720p, doesn't seem to matter) trailer for Toy Story 3. Stick it on a flash drive formatted with FAT32. Stick it in my 360, and the video comes up as non playable. I used to be able to play Quicktime videos on my 360 with ease up until fairly recently. I don't know if some behind the scenes updated hosed me or what.

But I loved downloading trailers off the net and playing 'em on my HDTV this way - mostly because the Marketplace is pretty poor about current movie trailers. That issue aside, why can't I play this?

SURELY I can't be the only one this is happening to - and if I am the only person, how do I fix this? I've changed nothing on my 360 - not that that's easily doable anyway - the point here is they just "Stopped working" for me, and I have zero idea why.

[Joe Siegler]

Can someone with a 360, please do this and let me know if you can play the video?

[Scream]

Pretty sure Quicktime has never been a supported format on the 360 Joe. I have two 360s, one with the old dashboard before they changed to the Wii-like structure, and one with the latest and greatest dashboard and all the updates, and neither of them will play a .MOV file. WMV, AVI, DIVX, and some MPEGs, but that's it.

[Joe Siegler]

It's played Quicktime before. I've never had a problem with 1080p files until Up. Everything from Up forwards I can't play. Older ones I can.

[Scream]

Hmmm, weird. Perhaps there are only certain codecs of Quicktime it'll play. Any of the ones I have on my PC that I've tried come back with an "unsupported format" error. They actually show up in the list of files in the folder with a big red slash through them. When given a choice on formats, I never choose MOV anymore because of this.

It's actually surprising that Microsoft would support a closed format from a competitor at all. Regardless, it seems as if it's the file that's different from the other files, and not a change on the 360 itself.

[Damien_Azreal]

I just tried the 1080p and 720p Quicktime trailers for Toy Story 3, both resolutions gave me the "Unsupported format" bit to.

I don't have anything older to try... but I'm also running the latest update.

[The Dukenator]

Those MOV files are dummy files, open them with Notepad, as the real file name is shown. Download that file from the same site.

Example:
Current file: http://movies.apple.com/movies/disney/toystory3/toystory3-tsr_1080p.mov
Opened in Notepad:
Tmoov Lrmra Drmda ,rdrf url toystory3-tsr_h1080p.mov rmdr
ð
Actual file: http://movies.apple.com/movies/disney/toystory3/toystory3-tsr_h1080p.mov

Now, I don't know if they'll work in the 360. I have one, but busy with other shit.

[Joe Siegler]

Damien_Azreal, try the 720p version of this. I was able to play it when it first came out.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/up/hd

The 1080p version sort of worked, but it crapped out in the middle of playback when Carl F goes "SO LONG BOYS! Pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt"

Dukenator.. I'm talking about the full files. In Quicktime, you can save them as full mov files. I'm not talking about the stub you're talking about.

[The Dukenator]

Ah, ok.

I did try those files on my 360, no luck. Even the 480p doesn't work either.
It does have the optional media update, but it still didn't work.

[Joe Siegler]

WTF!

Did you try the UP ones, too?

[The Dukenator]

I've only tried the teaser, no go. Dunno about the others.

[Tualmasok]

If you host the media on a PC that has compatible codecs installed (for WMP), the 360 will pick up on those and will play the media. However, this only works for networked media stored on a PC, not for removeable media.

This does not work with all media types, it may not even work with same-format/different-versions of media. Bloody MS, go figure.

Why the hell have you got a 360 anyway? They suck as a media box, struggle with half-HD games and is only good for D3D on XBLA - And D3D PC is still better than that!

Just build yourself a media PC - It sits right next to your TV, you can play games on it, surf the net, order food online, download awesome WAREZ and watch filth PRON.

*pffft*

Bloody xBox 360's. I have two.

[Yatta]

Joe, you need to convert your MOV files to QuickTime HD H.264 because that's the only Quicktime codec the 360 works with.


Why the hell have you got a 360 anyway? They suck as a media box, struggle with half-HD games and is.
While I may disagree with your statement there, I won't reply here because I don't think that's what we're supposed to be discussing in this thread. :)

[Tualmasok]

Too true Yatta. And my PC bias is fueled by a Core2 Quad 3870x2 gaming machine, so it is well fueled indeed.

[SplatterHappy]

Joe, you need to convert your MOV files to QuickTime HD H.264 because that's the only Quicktime codec the 360 works with.

There's an optional (not optional if you want to actually play Mpeg4 movies, obviously) 2.43 MB update that has to be downloaded from XBLive for that to work also.

Joe, if you don't already have a converter that can do that, I just tested H.264 Encoder 1.5 (freeware). Converted .mov to .mp4 no problem and they play flawlessly on the 360. It's got a nice self-explanitory GUI too. :cool:

Here's the url: http://www.h264encoder.com/

[Joe Siegler]

Yeah, I can do that, but my point is they used to work without any conversion necessary. Did Apple change something in the Quicktime spec in more recent versions?

[SplatterHappy]

Yeah, I can do that, but my point is they used to work without any conversion necessary. Did Apple change something in the Quicktime spec in more recent versions?

I found this: "Please note that some people have had success with playing back standard resolution MOV (QuickTime) and certain high resolution MOV (QuickTime HD) files directly without further re-encoding, so you might want to try this first. QuickTime HD files are already encoded using H.264, but some are encoded using settings which are incompatible with the Xbox 360's H.264 support."

On this website: http://www.digital-digest.com/news-60532.html

So apparently all .MOV files are not created equal. :o
Sounds like Windows Media Player with it's bloody "that codex is no longer valid" crap. Bloody DRM will be the end of us all, I swear.