I've been using Snapz Pro quite frequently over the past few days to take onscreen video. I must say that until today, I've been quite pleased. But today, I create some videos that were more than 24 seconds long. For whatever reason, from 24s and onward, video taken by Snapz Pro becomes blocky.

You can see this clearly in my sample video Sample Video.

I created that video in Snapz Pro 2.1.2, and saved as: MPEG-4 Video, 10 fps, Key frame every 500 frames, Limited to 800kb/s, Best quality. I confirmed this problem occurs regardless of app, and regardless of OS (tested under 10.4.11 and 10.5.1).

Is this a bug? Is there a workaround?

Thank you.

It looks like the compressor (from within QuickTime, as Snapz uses QT for all its encoding needs) starts having spasms after encoding 24 seconds of video. Does it happen with any other codec, like say, Animation? What if you increase the bitrate limit?

Increasing the bitrate for MPEG-4 does nothing good -- I still get the blocks after 24 seconds.

But I just tested Snapz Pro video with the Animation codec and there are no blocks after 24 seconds. Seems odd though because I don't get the blocks after 24 seconds when exporting MPEG-4 from FCP or other QT compatible apps. Any thoughts on this?

Thank you!

Hello-
Definitely some redraw issues in that video.

I just ran a few tests here with the MPEG-4 codec, 10fps, keyframe every 500 frames and limited data rage to 800kb/s and I didn't get any artifacts in the video.

If you try saving a movie now with that codec do you still have problems?

What machine are you on?

I was just able to reproduce this, and the problem did start right around 24 seconds. Very interesting. Our Snapz developer will look into it.

I mentioned in my post above that I am able to export video from other apps without such artifacts, using that same MP4 codec. That is the sole reason I posted here, suspecting it could be a Snapz Pro problem.

I am using a PPC G4, 7455 1.3GHz Mac. And as I posted above, I tested and confirmed the artifacts in Snapz Pro 2.1.2 in Tiger and Leopard.

Thankfully, someone else in this thread has confirmed the problem.

Hello-
I should have used something with higher contrast, like text, when I did my tests. After reading Mike's post, I went back and I was able to recreate this also - artifacts after 24 seconds.

So I went back to my first movie, and indeed there were artifacts, it was just that the textures in the movie made it difficult to see.

While it seems likely it is something SP X is doing incorrectly, SP X uses QuickTime to do most of the heavy lifting during movie conversion/saving. Creating and saving a file as mpeg-4 is entirely different than converting and exporting an already existing file (there was a bug in previous versions of QT related to the H.264 codec that did not affect exported movies, only newly created and saved ones).

I should be able to discuss this with the developer today and I'll let you know what we find.

Thanks for your patience, and sorry for missing this the first time out.