Using QuickTime or FFMPEG on a PC?

Author: nostromo

About: Software Architect at ArKaos
Web: http://nostromo.noisepages.com/

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Here’s a quick tip for PC users: if you use a multi-core/multi-processor machine with GrandVJ or MediaMaster, you will benefit a lot to use codecs that are played through our FFMPEG player rather than through QuickTime.

This is due to the fact that on a PC, the internal QuickTime decoding routines are not capable of multi-threading, which makes it impossible to decode frames in parallel. So even if one layer can run properly using QuickTime libraries, the more layer you pile up, the more the decoding bottleneck will show up.

On Mac OSX, QuickTime is now mostly multi-threaded decoding so it’s not such an issue but we recommend to try to use codec supported by our FFMPEG player in any case.

Important: make sure you understand we refer to the internal QuickTime player and NOT to QuickTime files in general. Some QuickTime files (for example, files based on mpeg/mpeg2/mpeg4/PhotoJPEG/Motion JPEG/H.264 codec) are played through the FFMPEG player.

To know what internal player is used for what file, use the information shown in the visual library:

Visuals library

In this case, both movies are QuickTime files. The first one is read through QuickTime because the Cinepak Codec is not handled by FFMPEG.It will play but it is not optimal.

The second is read through FFMPEG because it’s using H.264 codec, it is therefore better for performances.

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