http://www.osnews.com/story/13902/How_to_Get_Your_Intel_Mac_to_Play_WMV_Files Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:59:11 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?102350 http://osnews.com/thread?102350 Perhaps they've fixed this, but the Flip4Mac plug-in caused all my Office v.X apps to crash on launch. Was very puzzling until I found other users with the same problem. A quick uninstall the F4M plug-in returned Office's functionality.

This was on Tiger. I don't know if the bug applies to Office 2004 for Mac or not. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (paperfrog) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102351 http://osnews.com/thread?102351 I haven't used an Intel mac so this is going on an idea alone.

CAn you navigate to /Library/QuickTime and set the individual plugins to use rosetta?

I don't know If Quick time will run it that way though. It would be interesting to find out. anyone got an intel mac Mini I could test it on? Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Peragrin) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102352 http://osnews.com/thread?102352 Pretty useful tip, I wonder why I didn't think of that I'm currently trying out OSX on my Asus laptop and I'm getting more and more comfortable with idea of getting a Mac in the future. The only serious problem I've encountered is the lack of codecs. I'm used to installing VLC and playing everything I throw at it (except wmv of course) but on Mac it doesn't seem to be the case. Is it that there are codecs that aren't ported to OSX or am I doing something wrong? Forgive me my OSX-n00bishness Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (miscz) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102353 http://osnews.com/thread?102353 Only .app files have the ability to toggle the "Run Using Rosetta" setting. That doesn't mean it can't be done, it just means that it's not a simple switch in the Finder (at least, one that is immediately obvious). Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Adam S) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102355 http://osnews.com/thread?102355 VLC does little good for some kinds of .wmv and web pages that incorporate them. This is why this application is so important, especially after the demise of Windows Media Player for Mac. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102363 http://osnews.com/thread?102363 MS sucks, they could do better if they'd try and fix their image. No wonder most mac users and also pc user hate ms. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sp29) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102367 http://osnews.com/thread?102367 can't you just use mplayer to play wmv files? Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous.) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102368 http://osnews.com/thread?102368 i have a older copy of windows media player ive been using for ppc.

has anyone tried Camino for browsing, it's seems faster than Safari. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sp29) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102369 http://osnews.com/thread?102369 No, mplayer on the Mac hasn't played successfully most of the WMV I threw at it. And don't forget, the point of Flip4Mac is NOT pure playback of WMV, it is WEB PLUGIN support for WMV, via the Quicktime interface. Neither Mplayer or VLC can do that. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102370 http://osnews.com/thread?102370 "Apple+click" is usually called (and IIRC, officially) command+click, or cmd+click for short. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JrezIN) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102372 http://osnews.com/thread?102372 IIRC, there was a new version release last week (x.02 instead of the original x.01). Maybe it solve this crashes, you may wanna try. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JrezIN) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102377 http://osnews.com/thread?102377 mplayer on the Mac hasn't played successfully most of the WMV I threw at it.
did you try downloading additional codecs from http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/codecs.html?

WEB PLUGIN support for WMV,
there is an mplayer plugin...

via the Quicktime interface.
eww... why? Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous.) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102379 http://osnews.com/thread?102379 I use Camino almost exclusively now. I would warn you, though: I've had a lot of problems with recent nightly builds, and eventually went back to 1.0. Stick with stable releases.

My only complaint about Camino is the fact that once your tabs fall off the screen, there is NO way to work with them save keyboard shortcuts. It's weak to not be able to close the tabs without cmd+w. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Adam S) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102382 http://osnews.com/thread?102382 Because the mplayer plugin is not as stable as Quicktime is. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 01:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102385 http://osnews.com/thread?102385 yeah, I've only used Camino for about an hour so far. So far so good, hopefully they keep devoloping it. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 01:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sp29) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102398 http://osnews.com/thread?102398 I have tried the trick, but Safari still tells me that it can't a suitable plugin for the content. I am trying CNN Pipeline. Anyone else having problems? Any ideas? Wed, 08 Mar 2006 01:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (karbon) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102405 http://osnews.com/thread?102405 >Perhaps they've fixed this, but the Flip4Mac plug-in caused all my Office v.X apps to crash on launch.

Try going to each Office (v.X) app preferences and disabling "Show Project Gallery on Startup". That fixed the crash on launch bug for me. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 02:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (PowerMacX) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102407 http://osnews.com/thread?102407 VLC can't play WM3 (aka Windows Media 9) files natively, only WM2 & 1 (among a lot of other formats). The reason it works on Linux is because it "cheats" by using Windows' DLL codec, and that is not an option in OS X.

Same deal with MPlayer. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 02:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (PowerMacX) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102416 http://osnews.com/thread?102416 [quote]VLC can't play WM3 (aka Windows Media 9) files natively, only WM2 & 1 (among a lot of other formats). The reason it works on Linux is because it "cheats" by using Windows' DLL codec, and that is not an option in OS X. [/quote]

Wouldn't that be easier, now that Mac is Intel? Wed, 08 Mar 2006 03:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (malkia) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102418 http://osnews.com/thread?102418 That the makers of digital media for the web stick to open standard formats instead of .WMV .MOV amd .RM,these all require proprietary media players to watch the presentations,oh sure vlc handles a lot of them,but the bottom line is they play better in their native environments.My gf just made a touching little presentation starring her grandchildren ,she used MS movie maker software,I really liked it and asked her if she would burn me a copy because I have been around .I told her to save it as an mpg or avi file so i could watch it on my BeOS box or in Linux because ?I really don't have a windoze box any more except my laptop which has win98 SE on it,guess what there's no options to save a move as anything besides wmv in MS movie maker,funny i can fire up my copy of the 8 yr old program Adamation personal studio(an old BeOS program thats very similar to Movie Maker),make a similar presentation, and save it as an .avi file that will play virtually anywhere and on any OS,now if iwere trying to present something to the general public i would want to do it in the format that would reach the biggest audience,With the growing popularity of OSX and Linux these days you would think they would address this,after all how many video tapes come out on BetaMax these days and how many DVD's in the old LaserDisc format? Wed, 08 Mar 2006 03:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Saquatch666) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102431 http://osnews.com/thread?102431 A truer idiot could post no better than thou. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 04:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rockwell) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102433 http://osnews.com/thread?102433 What format would you suggest they use? You said avi but you didn't specify a codec. I don't use windows too often but recently I needed to burn a DVD for someone that made the video in Windows Movie Maker. Since I have a mac I needed to get it in a usable format. Movie maker does support exporting as DV using the avi format.. IT creates a huge file but it is a way of getting it out of movie maker without loosing quality. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 04:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cilcoder) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102454 http://osnews.com/thread?102454 Yeah that's exactly how I got that problem solved too, so just go into Library/Quicktime and temporarily move your flip4mac .component files somewhere else

fire up office and disable "show project gallery on startup"

now you can put those .component files back in

note that this still doesn't let you use the project gallery... it just prevents it from crashing office at startup Wed, 08 Mar 2006 07:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gerghk) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102459 http://osnews.com/thread?102459 I use Camino almost exclusively now.

Showstopper in Camino: opening dropdown menus from the bookmarks bar takes ages each time you load Camino. SO annoying. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 09:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102476 http://osnews.com/thread?102476 the mplayer plugin is less stable than quicktime? i've never had the mplayer plugin crash on any system i've used it on... unfortunately i can't say the same about quicktime...Browser: Opera/8.01 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/1.2.3214; es; U; ssr) Wed, 08 Mar 2006 12:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous.) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102482 http://osnews.com/thread?102482 cilcoder posed a very good question.

Isn't the quicktime spec an open standard? It seems that Mpeg 4 / Divx are pretty widely supported using the avi container. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 13:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dwilz) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102496 http://osnews.com/thread?102496 Showstopper in Camino: opening dropdown menus from the bookmarks bar takes ages each time you load Camino. SO annoying.

Ok, got that fixed, thanks to the disable-favicon-in-bookmarks-bar-hack [1]. Nice!

[1] http://www.caminobrowser.org/support/hiddenprefs/ Wed, 08 Mar 2006 14:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102500 http://osnews.com/thread?102500 If setting a checkbox is all it needs to run, why can't the Mac tell if it's PPC in the first place and launch Rosetta itself? What, it has no idea that the code is PPC and not x86?? That just doesn't seem right. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 14:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (FrankNBeans) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102502 http://osnews.com/thread?102502 Because it's QUICKTIME you need to trick, and Quicktime is native. You only need it to be emulated to use the WMV decoder for Windows Media 9+ files, which may only be some of the files you use. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 14:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Adam S) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102505 http://osnews.com/thread?102505 Er… either that or just download Windows Media Player for Mac OS X ( http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=w... ) while you wait for Flip4Mac's Intel version.

Sure it sucks big time, and sure MS discontinued it, so it is not getting any better, but it's still there. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 14:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (elmimmo) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102509 http://osnews.com/thread?102509 Nope. It doesn't play WMV9 files. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 14:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Adam S) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?102665 http://osnews.com/thread?102665 I should probably post after I go home & try this on my Intel Mac, but it might be a good idea to make a second copy of Quicktime.app (i.e.: Quicktime-Rosetta.app) and set the rosetta flag on that. That way you'd be able to run original Intel-native version for non-wmv files.

I'm may muck around sometime and see if I can mess with the .app internals, and inject a shell script that will start one or another binary depending on the file name...

None of this would really help the browser plug-in, but maybe someone can grab the open source Safari & trick it out. Wed, 08 Mar 2006 22:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (spacehaven) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?103139 http://osnews.com/thread?103139 > Nope. It doesn't play WMV9 files

Yep. It does. WMP 9 for Mac OS X has always played WMV3 inside a WMV container perfectly fine. In fact, up to the release of Flip4Mac, it was the only way to do it.

(OK, not so for AVI containers, but you can solve that with WMV3Server [1], and besides, who uses WMV3 in an AVI?)

[1] http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/8128/Edited 2006-03-10 13:20 Fri, 10 Mar 2006 13:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (elmimmo) Comments