[X4U] .avi files: blank screen with Quicktime player

Eugene list-themacintoshguy at fsck.net
Sun Sep 11 19:30:18 PDT 2005


On Sun, Sep 11, 2005 at 01:54:39PM CDT, Nick Scalise <nickscalise at cox.net> wrote:
: 
: On Sep 11, 2005, at 1:06 PM, Germain M. wrote:
: 
: >I dl some .avi files but to my surprise, Quicktime player doesn't  
: >read them. I can hear the sound but the screen in the window player  
: >is snow white. A visit at Apple site suggests some other players  
: >like VCD X. Same thing with this player. I don't know a thing about  
: >codecs and things like that. What is there to do to have Quicktime  
: >player show them?
: >
: >Here's what the "Info on sequence (french) " window of Quicktime  
: >player tells me: "MPEG de couche 3, Stéréo, 24,000 Khz
: >XVID, 512 x 384, Millions".
: 
: Good job on discovering the Codec. As you can see this file is using  
: the XVID codec for video and MPEG Layer 3 for Audio.
: 
: If you want QuickTime Player to play them you should download and  
: install the XVID codec here:
: <http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~naegelic/index.php>
: 
: Or the DivX codec from here:
: <http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/>
: 
: Or you can use VLC from here:
: <http://videolan.org/>
: 
: Or you can use MPlayer from here:
: <http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net/>
: 
: At this point there seems to be some compatibility issues with DivX  
: and QuickTime 7. So it's probably best to use VLC or Mplayer for the  
: time being.

I haven't run into too many compatability issues.  But the QuickTime
codecs for XVID, DIVX, etc. are somewhat slow and results in sometimes
jerky playback.  As a general rule of thumb, if it ends with ".avi",
use VLC or MPlayer instead.


-- 
Eugene
http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/


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