intermorphic.com Blog

Thanks to the helpful people at HTC support I have now found out how to play the MP4 video files I recorded on my HTC Touch HD – simply rename them to .3gp files and they will play fine in Quicktime.

I had been trying everything, including searching the net, for a solution as to why they would not play in anything I had in Mac or Windows. I could not find any suggestion anywhere, hence this post in the hope it might help someone. Every media player I tried just said something like the following (unhelpful Mac finder message) “The movie could not be opened. An invalid sample description was found in the movie.”

I was told by HTC that the 3gp format was derived from the mp4 format, which itself is itself derived from mov (quicktime). Well, why they do not save to a .3gp file instead of .mp4 file, which won’t play anywhere, goodness only knows! Go figure. But, at least the problem is now solved and I can play my video files.