Poor quality m4v videos

[Anar_London]

Hi. I recently switched from Windows to Mac and noticed how poor the quality of the M4V videos are. Any reason for this? The file sizes are even bigger than the Windows WMV format, but the quality is considerably poorer. When you watch in full screen it's difficult to read the text on slides.

Please advise what's wrong.

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Anar,

To my knowledge, the m4v videos have generally been superior to the WMV. Which video(s) please? Thanks, David

 

[Anar_London]

That's exactly what I had expected as well, especially given the larger files sizes.

Pick any video - they're all same quality. I have posted a screenshot here to illustrate (hope you don't mind me posting a screenshot). The screenshot was from "2011.T1.a.-Foundations.m4v" file. I played the video in QuickTime Player and my OS is Lion OS X.

OK the text is readable most of the time, but the blurred vision tires your eyes pretty quick, given the length of the videos.

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Hi Anar,

Right, I pulled the same video: they are produced for ipods: so in order to converse size (which is relative, since, to your point, in absolute terms the M4V are huge), they look fine in smaller screen but lose fidelity as the screen size increases.

There is nothing i can do about the existing 2011 videos (and frankly, we've had no complaints but I suspect that's because the screens only recently got bigger).

But i do see camtasia has already availed us of option for iPad, so I *think* we can improve the issue with respect to the upcoming 2012 videos ... I have created a priority ticket to liase with techsmith (makers of camtasia) to ensure we can get the best possible m4V for larger screen formats (i guess iPad is the appropriate use case). I am sorry i can't "fix" the loss of fidelity in existing videos, but i do appreciate that you've alerted me to the challenge. Thanks, David

 

[trabala38]

Hi David,

I confirm what Anar_London states: 2011 M4V videos are a little blur when playing them with an iPad.

Would be very nice if the new 2012 M4V videos fit perfectly the iPad screen !

Regards,

trabala38

 

[Anar_London]

Hi,

As this problem was bugging me, I found a solution. I figured that if the WMV versions of the files were good quality, all I needed was to find a way to view those files on my MacBook. I researched on the net and one of the easiest and recommended ways seems to be by installing a plug-in for your Quick-Time: Flip4Mac WMV 2 – Components for QuickTime

http://dynamic.telestream.net/downloads/download-flip4macwmv.asp?prodid=flip4macwmv

There are other tools, or dedicated players, but this seems to be the most straightforward one.

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Hi Anar,

Thank you for taking the time to look and share a solution ... did you mean to say that you have tried with the plug-in and that the quality is improved? Thanks

 

[Anar_London]

Hi David,

I am always grateful whenever I found information helpful to me that is posted by others, so only right that I try to do the same.

Re quality - it's not so much that it is improved, but I use the different version of the file. See you have the videos both in WMV (for Windows) and M4V (for Mac) formats. In the past I had used WMV format when I had a Windows based laptop, and know that the quality was good. After I switched to Mac, I tried to use the M4V format that is recognised by Mac. However, as noted above the quality wasn't good at higher resolution. As I knew the quality of the WMV format was good, I simply looked for a way to play WMV on my Mac and the solution shown above seems to solve for that.

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Hi Anar,

Okay, right, I see ... for some reason, at larger screens the WMV renders better than the M4V. Great to know (it may be just a function of how they are produced, I've got to think the native M4V can be better if the production is correct. Maybe this is the point of the ipad option, but then I may need to worry about the file size)

Thanks again for sharing the information!

 

[evernn]

I downloaded Bros WMV converter, it is a good software, the quality is better, i hope it can help you.