01-26-2010, 01:18 PM

Hello guys, I am currentley depolyed to Iraq and have a couple questions. I have a mac (it is about a year and half old and its black ). I just bought a 500GB Western Digital External hard drive a week ago and I had a buddy transfer over 400 movies onto it (almost filling it). Here is the problem: He transfered them from a PC and I cannot get them to play on my MAC. I have not used my mac much and I am not real familiar with it so could someone please help me out here? There is about 3 movies that I can play and they play in quicktime, but they are very poor quality. I plugged my External hard drive into a buddyss HP and he could play every single movie in Windows media player and they looked great. Thats about all I have done any help would be appricated. Thanks in advance guys

01-26-2010, 01:31 PM

Get:

Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime components
and
Windows Media® Components for QuickTime

to play wmvs

if that doesn't help (which it really should)

get:
VideoLAN, Free streaming and multimedia solutions for all OS! and play it with VLC

or get:

Plex Media Center for OS X (a media center style app for the Mac, quite nice, but really requires a remote to easily navigate since it's not designed for mouse use, although you can use a keyboard with it once you learn the keysets)

01-26-2010, 01:34 PM

Flip4Mac is another popular player for wmv Download Flip4Mac WMV Player for Mac - Play Windows Media in QuickTime Player. MacUpdate Mac Software Downloads

01-26-2010, 01:36 PM

Just download VLC.

It will play anything you throw at it. Perian will likely work as well, but I'm still a fan of VLC over QT.

01-26-2010, 01:41 PM

My buddy actually put VLC onto the hard drive and did not work. Or it is different software for the MAC vs his PC

01-26-2010, 01:55 PM

In terms of VLC - there is a version of VLC for Mac and one for PC. If he attempted to take his windows version of VLC and install/run it on your Mac, that was probably your problem. Download VLC player from the link I posted, open the DMG and transfer the program to your applications folder, then run VLC and have it open the appropriate video files. VLC will play many, many file types (containers/codecs) without problem, including HD files.

Originally Posted by Collin Bl

Flip4Mac is another popular player for wmv Download Flip4Mac WMV Player for Mac - Play Windows Media in QuickTime Player. MacUpdate Mac Software Downloads

My second link was the flip4mac free download Although telestream still has the flip4mac website and purchase options, the download actually directs you to Microsoft.

01-26-2010, 02:08 PM

Thanks guys!! I just joined this site and you regular mac users seem to know your **** thanks again and once i get off work here i will download VLC and give it a whirl. I see there are a few options to choose for the download, when I click "About this Mac" I see I have version 10.5.2, how do I find out what version I have?? Or can you tell me which one do I click on to download the right version of VLC

01-26-2010, 02:11 PM

Well, if you click About this Mac, it should tell you not only the OSX version, but also the processor - if the processor says G4 or G5, then you have a PPC version Mac (which requires Universal or PPC specific versions of applications), if it says Intel - well, then you have a Intel mac that will play Intel specific or universal Mac binaries.. You may want to update your Mac, 10.5.2 is really old - you don't necessarily need to go out and buy Snow Leopard, but you can download patches to bring your system to 10.5.8.

01-27-2010, 01:54 PM

hello guys still having issues. I downloaded flip for mac and the movies I want to play I have to drag them from from hard drive and drop them into Divics player in order to get them to play. Also I have delted about 100 gig of stupied movies I recieved in the bunch and trying to get a few more movies off a segate hardrive of of MAC owner. He has no trouble taking movies off mine but I can not get his because it says my Western Digital is locked. HOW CAN I UNLOCK MY PERMISSION AND PUT THE WESTERN DIGITAL TO READ AND WRITE. LIKE I SAID IT IS LOCKED INTO READ ONLY.Would I be better off returning the western digital and getting the segate?

01-27-2010, 02:01 PM

I also must say it says on the box Western Digital My Passport Essential came in a green box

01-27-2010, 02:46 PM

The WD is most likely formatted NTFS - OSX can't write to NTFS, only read (well, there is a NTFS driver in OSX that kind of works, but it's hazardus from what I understand) - assuming it is NTFS, you can get a program that will let you read and write to that drive - it's called NTFS-3G - it's free - download it and install it. Keep in mind, you'll want to make sure to properly unmount the drive in OSX (using eject) and your friend will want to make sure he "safely removes" the hardware when disconnecting - NTFS-3G is real picky if the drive was not cleanly disconnected.