Multimedia Codecs

Sorry for asking so many questions here, but so far every one of them have been answered thoroughly, so I keep coming back

I have a few questions about multimedia codecs, I think I'll condense them all here.

1. Is the H264 codec included in Quicktime Pro by default? I have a video file here that I was told is encoded with H264 but when I try to open it with Quicktime, I am told it "can not open movie."

2. Does OS X have anything similar to G-Spot? (It's a program that tells you what formats the audio/video streams in a file are encoded in)

3. Is it possible to get codecs for RealMedia and .wmv and .mkv into Quicktime? I know about VLC, RealPlayer, etc, but I would rather not have three programs to do one task (watch videos). If I can get Quicktime codecs for these formats, I'd be a happy camper. (xine, mplayer, even WMP can do this)

That's it for now, I think. Thanks, guys

Just get VLC. It opens everything, and it's just one program.

You might need Flip4Mac too, but that should be it.

Flip4Mac makes it so you can play .wmv in quicktime. I don't know of anything other than RealPlayer or VLC that will play .rm/.ram, though.

macdillon said:

Just get VLC. It opens everything, and it's just one program.

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To that I respond with:

Hikaru79 said:

I know about VLC, RealPlayer, etc, but I would rather not have three programs to do one task (watch videos).

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If it's simply not possible to do it in Quicktime, then yeah, I'll use VLC. But if the possibility's still there, I'd like to try that first.

michaelstumpf said:

Flip4Mac makes it so you can play .wmv in quicktime. I don't know of anything other than RealPlayer or VLC that will play .rm/.ram, though.

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Ah, sorry, I posted that other reply while you were still typing this. I'll give this a shot

You can try to play the .rm in Quicktime after you download Flip4Mac. It may work, I haven't tried before. You may get lucky.

VLC Frustrations

Arg! I finally caved and decided to try out VLC. First I install the latest release build (for Intel!)

My .mkv and .avi files all worked great, but the .wmv files only had audio and no video. They also threw an error about fourcc 'WMV3'. So I check the VLC forums and the general reccomendation is to try out the latest nightly build instead. So I do that, and .avi .mkv still work gret, and now .wmv video works, but no audio! It's backwards! Also, now it crashes whenever I close the video (although it works fine until I do close it).

Can anyone tell me from experience of a previous nightly build that worked?

Thanks

Do you have a link to a .mkv file? I know .avi works with Flip4Mac, but I've never tried .mkv

I've uploaded one from my hard drive for you. It's not terribly interesting unless you're a Go player, but it will do for testing Here's the link: http://thegoban.com/inglecture.mkv

The few .wmv files I've run into that I can't play in VLC usually work in windows media player for mac. Also, there are many codec's out there which don't have a mac version so you're pretty much out of luck when it comes to those but they are pretty rare. Unfortunately I think the best solution is to have all the players.

Ah!! I now report success! I was discouraged from installing Flip4Mac by all the cost ads on the site. However, I found a free version that only includes the plugins at -- wait for it -- Microsoft's site! I got this here: Windows Media Components for Quicktime -- and now .wmv works! And from quicktime, best of all. Excellent

You can try to play the .rm in Quicktime after you download Flip4Mac. It may work, I haven't tried before. You may get lucky.

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Tried that, no luck .mkv doesn't work with QT yet either, although VLC helps. I'll keep looking for an mkv solution.

Thanks again to you guys at MacForums. I don't know what I'd do without you Fifth time in a row.