On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 11:10:05PM -0500, Jeremy Huntwork wrote: > Nathan's email reminded me that there's also a dubious statement on the > current ffmpeg page. The page references using qt-faststart to 'flatten' > files by moving the index to the front of the file. > > Indeed, qt-faststart does move the moov atom (which contains metadata about > the video) to the front - the purpose being that video players can begin > playing the video before it has even fully downloaded. But I don't believe > that the correct term for this procedure is 'flattening'. > > The term 'flattening a video' originates from the need to export a mac > formatted file so it could be played in Windows, by moving all the movie data > into the data fork instead of leaving necessary components in the resource > fork (elements which were part of how the Mac OS stored its files). One of > the best descriptions I found is here: > http://www.macwindows.com/tutfiles.html#Flattening > > Also, here's a link to the qt-faststart source which has a good description > about what it does in comments at the top: > http://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git;a=blob;f=tools/qt-faststart.c;h=ace4c113c88850613aff2f9158a08a6164fc6bac;hb=HEAD > > I suppose it is possible that many traditional tools when performing the > 'flatten' task also moved the moov atom to the front (I haven't verified > that) and perhaps that's why YouTube used that term in its error messages, > but doing that alone (which is all qt-faststart does) is not flattening. > > Anyway, just a nitpick. > > JH > As the person who mentioned flattening to Andy, all I can say is that common usage at youtube refers to it. And, despite the implication that it is only to improve the user experience, it is necessary to use it to successfully upload .mov files there.
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