SmartyCam HD 2.1 and QuickTime
 

Any news on when or even if AiM is going to update the video format of the SmartCam HD 2.1 to be compatible with the latest releases of QuickTime in Mac Sierra 10.12.x?

No new news, although they've (Italy) has been aware for several weeks.

I get all of my Apple users who don't want to use VLC Player to install QT 7 Pro on their Sierra equipped hardware. Works fine.

I've had QuickTime 7 Pro for a long time and have used it for videos over QuickTime 10 all along. I am planning on using the Photos app to manage movies and it requires QuickTime 10 compatibility to work.

Sorry, can't help, then.

Winders:

install ffmpeg on your mac, open terminal, go to the folder where you have your mov file and run:

ffmpeg -i input.mov -vcodec copy -acodec copy output.mov


That should do the trick

Thanks. That works well and fixes the video. It does cause some strange green frames at the beginning of the video but those can usually be trimmed without when editing the video.

This is the correct command these days:

ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v copy -c:a copy output.mov

The "vcodec" and "acodec" switches have been deprecated and replaced with "c:v" and "c:a", respectively.

Normally, I would complain that ffmpeg is too slow but since this command is not asking ffmpeg to do any encoding, it is very fast. When encoding is required, I definitely want something faster than ffmpeg. I found a MacX suite of tools, including a faster and flexible converter, for a cheap price and bought it.

The only thing it does is throw away that 3rd metadata channel. No idea where the green stuff comes from. I saw it too. Pretty weird since it is not re-encoding anything.

interesting, so it's just modifying the container?

Strips the channel Scott references from the index file, IIRC.

I think the first time I saw ffdshow was in 2005 as part of TraqStudio.

As soon as the frame changes, the green first frame goes away. When exporting, that green frame does not come through in the exported file, IIRC.

Yes
There are 3 streams. 1 video, 1 audio and 1 "garbage" (aka AiM metadata).
That last one is removed when running ffmpeg. No re-encoding so it is instant.

The green frames do indeed show up in the imported file. I would run the file through ffmpeg prior to trimming it.

What I wonder is if doing this will ruin any chances of using the files down the road when we have the ability to watch videos side by side with data in the AiM software.

I would imagine it would, same with the .mp4's made by the Delphi/Cosworth Performance Data Recorder (PDR) in GM products.

This information shows up when you pull up the SmartyCam HD video files in Race Studio 3 video comparison mode now. It contains lap times and total time information.

Try it. And I will, too.

I would strongly advise you to save the original files. No one here knows how it will be done/what you will need.

Easy enough to test! ;)

All the more reason that AiM should put some serious effort into fixing this problem sooner rather than later. Just because there is an older unsupported version of QuickTime out there that works does not give them reason to dally.