Not sure if anyone else is experiencing this situation, but I thought I’d go ahead and post my experiences in case this is helpful.
The Problem: “Video playback not supported” error received for certain MP4s via iTunes (64-bit) versions 11 an 12 on Windows 8.1.
Background and Details: I store my music on an external USB drive. The hard drive on my prior laptop was ancient, so it was much easier to store all the music on the external drive, map a drive to it (e.g., M: for Music or Media) and then to add all the files from the mapped M: drive to iTunes. This allowed me to keep a backup hard drive of all my media, which I could swap in seamlessly in the event of a drive failure. It also allowed me to switch from a locally connected USB drive to one networked via my router, or to a different laptop with the same mapped drive and library without having to rebuild playlists or the iTunes library.
When I recently replaced my ancient Windows 7 laptop with a Windows 8.1 laptop, I downloaded iTunes 11 (current at time of laptop purchase), mapped my external media drive, copied my library to my new laptop, and authorized my new device pretty seamlessly….or so I thought, until I went to view some of my “home videos.” Then all of a sudden, I started getting a “Video playback is not supported” message.
Most of these were video clips from DVDs that I had ripped for my personal use using MagicDVDRipper. All my videos played without issue in Windows Media Player or in QuickTime. Some of the videos played without issue in iTunes. Others prompted the error message. I looked at the video properties and could not find any obvious differences in image size, audio bit rate, etc. between videos that played and ones that didn’t.
The Rabbithole: Though I found many people reporting similar errors with different configurations, none of the proposed solutions worked for me. So here is what I tried:
- “High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is a security feature requiring the use of HDCP certified products in order to display digital media like High-defintion (HD) video. In iTunes for Windows, in order to view HD content, both the display hardware (computer screen, LCD, external monitor, and so on) and video card driver must support HDCP.” One proposed solution was to choose from the
- Updating to the latest version