Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Off Topic Jerky .mov play back - any Mac experts?

Some old videos (.mov) will only play jerkily in Quicktime, iMovie or VLC.

I have tried converting to other formats but resul t--- any experts around?

Using QuickTime 7 Pro...

Open the MOV file in QuickTime 7 Pro,
Click the "File" menu and select ‘Export’,
Click the "Export" menu and select ‘Movie to MPEG-4’,
Click "Save" to make an MP4 copy of the file.

Alternatively, right click on .mov file,
Chose ‘get info’,
Change ‘.mov’ to ‘.mp4’,
Confirm your changes.

Many thanks. I’ll try it.

What do you mean by jerkily? Frame rate mismatch or something else?

Hard to describe. Normally the videos are smooth and just like watching a normal movie. In the ones I’m talking about (from 2009 and they used to be ok) the movement is disjointed and seems to jump from frame to frame.

I’m afraid changing to MP4 didn't help. Also viewing in iOS on iPad or phone is the same.

Have you tried opening the files in iMovie, and converting them?

Alternatively, ‘Handbrake’ is a free to use software package that will assist you.

Other solutions will cost you money.

I'm now fairly sure it's a FPS rate problem. I will try to investigate a way to change that and let you know how I get on.

Many thanks for your assistance,
Philip

If you have a monitor that you can change refresh rate, you may be able to match multiples of the frame/field rate to that and get it to display smoothly, ie if the original material is PAL / UK rates it may play smooth if you can set your monitor refresh rate to something like 50/75 or 100.

Unfortunately many monitors only support 60Hz so this may not work.

This discussion prompted me to unearth old Hi8 movies that I had originally burnt onto DVD-RW, from a time when HDD’s were very expensive.

Being in TS format, I utilised iMedia Converter so that I could store them on my Mac Mini Server for playback on my AppleTV.