.mp4 is not a "proprieatary apple container". its the official container defined in mpeg-4 and supported in a lot of tools already

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Is there a way to create MPEG4-Files (mp4, framesize 320x200) from any video input stream/file/etc. with MPlayer that will be accepted by the iPod and its software? So far I've been unsuccessfully, unfortunately. All the video files I created were considered invalid (although playable by almost any video player software) by Apple's software.

Does anybody know? I have such an iPod and tried around a little bit. The sad thing is, Apple doesnt like the mp4- and mov-containers libavformat (-of lavf)

2005/12/15, Michael Scholz <Michael_Scholz@hotmail.com>: produces. There seem to be some "atoms" (metadata) missing or different, from what Apple wants.

libavformat does NOT produce 100% spec compliant .mp4 files and its therefore no surprise strict tools like qt and the ipod dont like these files i listed all open issues with libav .mp4 here in case someone wants to fix them: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=999556&group_id=16082&atid=116082

A crew called MobileHackerz have a modified FFmpeg to produce Apple-able mp4-containers, This hack is used by the Videora-Ipod-converter to create videos.

their patched ffmpeg from here: http://www.nurs.or.jp/~calcium/3gpp/sources/ http://www.nurs.or.jp/~calcium/3gpp/AVCTest-051030-2.zip fixes the following important problems: 1) asp: "- something doesnt seem to be correct in esds.decConfigDescr.decSpecificInfo.info. i am not sure but it seems as if it isnt set at all, which has to be the case! the missing decspecificinfo.info only seems to be the case when muxing raw part2 video to .mp4 when encoding with mpeg-4 to .mp4 its written" muxing/encoding creates it now 2) avc: "- the mandatory and very important avcC atom is missing" muxing/encoding creates it now the rest is still not fixed

You can use vlc though. It produces containers that are accepted by Quicktime and the iPod.

last time i tested vlc, it also didnt create 100% spec compliant .mp4 files the freely available tools able to create real spec compliant .mp4 files are mp4creator from the mpeg4ip project and mp4box from the gpac project