compatible codec for mov. file extension

I should start off by saying that I am illiterate when it comes to working with file ext. I have a new Panasonic FZ 28 camera that came bundled with basic Quiktime software. I want to capture some individual frames from a couple short movies that I took and which I have downloaded onto my computer. The problem the basic video programs I have...Media Player/Med Classic,etc.don’t allow me to do that. I heard that QT/Pro is a cheap answer. Any suggestions would be appreciated

Normally if you have QuickTime Player and Media Player Classic installed, you can play mov files in Media Player Classic without any problem.
Most video files you can open with Media Player Classic, you can capture individual frames during playback simply by pressing F5 (the pic will be automatically saved to your My Pictures folder). For accurate frame capture, use pause and the step button for moving frame by frame.
Anyway for whatever reason, F5 doesn’t seem to work with mov files. I get the error message “GetCurrentImage failed, hr = 80004001”. Possibly a bug. I’m using QuickTime 7.6 on XP SP3. Perhaps older versions of QuickTime would work?

The workaround if you want to save money is simply to use print-screen. Press alt-prnt scrn (it’s on the upper right of your keyboard next to scroll lock), then open Paint, and click edit and paste. Just drag the pic along and maybe adjust the borders a bit. Then file save as (png for lossless compression, jpg if you don’t mind a tiny bit of loss of quality - avoid bmp because it’s huge).

This doesn’t work well if you want to save lots of frames. You can try QuickTime Pro ($30 from Apple) for that. Open your file in QuickTime. Click file, export. In the export box pick movie to image sequence. Then click options and set the options to your liking (if you pick JPEG be sure to set the quality to something fairly high - the default is medium which is awful). Then it’ll grab all the frames from the movie and save them to the folder you pick.

Miscellaneous: I couldn’t help but notice the specs of your digital camera produce videos in Photo JPEG (that’s the name of the codec for the video stream; its fourcc (four character code) is jpeg). There’s a very nifty utility named MP4Cam2AVI (freeware and open source) which will losslessly transcode the audio and video stream from the mov container to the avi container. This will make the video much more compatible with video editing software (including virtualdub and windows movie maker). The program is non-intrusive (no install, it’s just a zip and you extract it to a folder and run it from there) and has a batch mode (convert a bunch of files in one click). http://mp4cam2avi.sourceforge.net/

I appreciate the information that you provided me and I will refer what parts I don’t quite follow to my computer wiz friend who built and maintains my computer. I believe that my Media Player Classic is an older version....like 7.456 something or other. When I attempt to open the .mov ext file with it, I too get an error message saying that the program has encounterd a problem and needs to close. The more technical information provided is beyond my comprehension and makes me very frustrated. I too am running XP.

I do not know what version of QuickTime I have since nothing I seem to do, checking the program file, right clicking on Properties...nothing seems to tell me. Only the QT logo is displayed on the Panasonic software disc that came with the camera and their rep told me that it was just a basic software program and that he didn’t believe a frame capture feature was included.

Unfortunately, I had downloaded the short test movie to my computer and it was after that when I found out none of my video software programs would apparently allow me to run and capture a frame. So, I tried backing up the movie onto the 4GB Sansdisk memory card as I thought I could then use the internal capture features of the camera but, alas, I was told by Panasonic that the camera was not designed to do this. You can only capture individual frames prior to downloading them onto your computer...like now they tell me. He admitted that the manual didn’t address this issue. I suppose that’s common knowledge to computer people.

Thanks again for your help.

Is Media Player Classic in your start menu? If so it may have been installed with QuickTime Alternative.
You can either get the latest version of QuickTime Alternative here, or the latest version of Media Player Classic here
And yes, you can have QuickTime and QuickTime Alternative side by side (even though QuickTime Alternative encourages you to uninstall QuickTime during setup, you don’t have to). QuickTime Alternative is a really good way to play your mov files in Windows Media Player and such, but it does have a few bugs (I personally play my mov files in regular QuickTime, even if its performance* doesn’t match that of QT Alt - I leave QT Alt to the more... adventurous users).

* QuickTime’s poor performance in Windows can be attributed by Microsoft’s efforts to undermine Apple on its turf and cripple QuickTime (this was shown at the DOJ trials). QuickTime Player plays awesome on a Mac.

Once again, I appreciate the information. Media Player Classic is not in my start menu...just the standard Media Player. Quick Time was just recently installed, as I previously indicated, when I applied the software bundled with the Panasonic Lumix FZ 28.

I will try to see if I can up-date my MPC with the link that you’ve provided and will go from there. If I still have issues and can’t open the .mov ext file, I think that I’ll just purchase either QT Pro or will check around for some other software options. I thought that I had located a good program...whose name I can’t recollect, at a local Sacramento Frys Electronics store. It was selling for about $70 with a $30 rebate and it had all kinds of editing features, including morph applications, etc. However, after checking it out on the Internet, I found post after post warning that the program would continually “crash”, so I decided against purchasing it.

Well, I went to the site that you recommended and found the link that took me to the up-date MPC download...something like 6.4.9 and then the next window opened and gave me 4 options for downloading to the “architecture” that best matched my system...??? I presume they are speaking about your operating system, but in the column that gave you the names it only said 386i or something like that and I didn’t see where there were options. What the hell are they talking about. This is why I hate doing this stuff because everyone talks “computerbonics” and I have no clue what they mean. I am always concerned that I may download something that I either don’t want, don’t need, or that will cause other issues.

Sorry that I’m such a dummy when it comes to these things.

Ah sorry. I should have given better instructions.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/
Click on the green button at the upper right that says download.
Scroll down to where it says media player classic (don’t click “media player classic” yet). If you need a foreign language version, look for media player classic (transl). Then on the very right of that row click download.
i386 means the 32-bit architecture that’s been in use since the 386 processor*. Anyway the 2 things you’ll often see when you download is x86 (or i386) and x64. x86 = 32-bit, x64 = 64-bit. x64 only works with a 64-bit version of Windows. x86 can work with either the 32-bit or 64-bit of windows.
At this point you’ll see mpc2kxp6490.zip and mpc98me6490.zip and .7z versions. If you have 7-zip installed you can download either. If you don’t have 7-zip, get the regular .zip version. 2kxp means windows 2000 and windows xp. 98me means windows 98 and millenium edition. Most people with Windows XP or Vista will get mpc2kxp6490.zip
Save it to your desktop, then when it’s done downloading, extract it to your desktop. If it’s in a folder, I suggest moving the file to your desktop and deleting the folder, because it’s very handy.

Other thing: QuickTime Player is freeware. Only QuickTime Pro is pay. QuickTime Pro has editing features that regular QT doesn’t have.

I’m wondering what version of QuickTime you have. If you open QuickTime, then go to help, about quicktime player, it should tell you the version. The latest version is 7.6
If you want to update it, uninstall your old version using add/remove programs, then go to http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download (pick the second choice - you don’t need iTunes unless you want it).

* it was 08086 at first, then 80286, 80386 etc. but they shortened it to 286, 386, etc. Then there was the 486 and it was supposed to be the 586, but Intel named it Pentium so they could trademark it (you can’t trademark a number apparently).