[X4U] avi files and quicktime

[Randy B.Singer]

Kansas Territory said:

>I have some .avi files which play fine in Quicktime player..  I've come 
>across one however, that opens up in quicktime, but then complains it 
>doesn't have what ever component or something to play the file.. and 
>that it's "not available online" or something to that affect.. like 
>quicktime wanted to download what ever it needed..
>
>any suggestions ?


You can play almost any AVI under OS X with:

VideoLan Client:
http://www.videolan.org/

or

MPlayer
http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net/

Or, with the proper codecs installed, QuickTime will play just about 
every type of AVI file.

See:
http://www.lordofthecows.com/avi_qt.php

An Apple KnowledgeBase article entitled "QuickTime : About Playing .AVI 
Files" can be found at 
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93199> .

The problem is that there are a number of different types of AVI files 
and you need to have the codec installed that works with the AVI that you 
want to open.

You can tell what codec was used in a given file by opening the file in
Quicktime and choosing 'show movie info' from the 'window' menu, and 
choosing 'properties.'

There is another codec called DIV 3.  You can open these AVI's with 
software called DivX which you can get from:  

http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/

DivX4Mac is a player that supports the high quality DivX video codec
http://download.projectmayo.com/dnload/divx4mac/OpenDivXInstall.sit

I hope this helps. 

 

Randy B. Singer
Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

Routine OS X Maintenance and Generic Troubleshooting
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html