While annotating mp4 media files in ELAN 5.5 on my macOS high Sierra issues with the video playback are occurring. When I play the video there is a delay, the video jumps to wherever the bar appears on the timeline and plays from there. When I highlight a field to input a value it freezes and skips. This continues throughout the whole video. I switched to another media file that is .mov and I had no issues with annotating or scrubbing the video on the timeline for precise length. Please advise.
Well, that is difficult to say. Can you provide some information on the encoding of the video. Maybe you can compare with the recommended settings in this media encoding guide?
I am having a similar issue. It works fine on one computer but when I transfer the files (eaf, pfsx, video, and audio file) to another computer, the video and audio won’t play. ELAN finds the files just fine and correctly syncs them up, but just won’t play audio or video.
Hello Han,
The video files (there are 2) are both .mp4. There is also a .wav audio file. In Elan, I annotate with all three attached. I compared their properties with the recommended settings, and it’s the same encoding H.264.
Any ideas on what could be making the media files freeze and skip on playback and timeline scanning? Thanks.
Since I have no idea what causes the jumping and freezing, I have only two suggestions:
- the encoding is more than just the main codec, h264, other properties (quality, number of key frames etc.) are important as well. You could try to convert two .mov files with Handbrake or ffmeg again to see if that makes any difference?
- there is also an “AVFX” version of ELAN, e.g. 5.7-AVFX that you can try. This version integrates a newer media player and offers a JavaFX media player as an alternative player for mp4 files.
@wangana: does this also concern macOS computers? Can you add some more basic information (versions of operating system and ELAN etc.)?