Help with movie codecs?

[debo]

I have problems playing some movies that are in the mpeg or mpg format. I've downloaded divx and the msmpeg4v1 and msmpeg4v2 codecs and still some of the movies will not play. What other codecs or software should I get?
The file tries to play in quicktime, although my old PC played them in windows media player. I've tried playing them with that on my Mac also but it doesn't work either.
Both quicktime and wmp say that they can not play this file because it is not a file that they understand or something to that affect.

[Sol]

Try Video Lan Client and M Player for OS X. Both of these applications can play the various movie codecs. VLC is a bit rough around the edges because by default soundtracks are switched off. Anyway, try those and see how you go.

[DaveTheGrey]

I agree with Sol, use VLC:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html

combined with divx (for avis) and quicktime pro u can play everything !

Dave out.

[MisterMe]

Originally posted by debo
I have problems playing some movies that are in the mpeg or mpg format. I've downloaded divx and the msmpeg4v1 and msmpeg4v2 codecs and still some of the movies will not play. What other codecs or software should I get?
The file tries to play in quicktime, although my old PC played them in windows media player. I've tried playing them with that on my Mac also but it doesn't work either.
Both quicktime and wmp say that they can not play this file because it is not a file that they understand or something to that affect. Download Winodws Media Player 9 for the Mac.

[debo]

I am using wmp 9. I'll try vlc.

[F/reW/re]

MPlayer rocks. It plays everything!
VLC has a great feature if the sound and picture isn't synced. You can set how many millisec the sound should be infront or behind the video.

[Makosuke]

I third that VLC is probably the way to go--it'll play most anything, and does well with MPEG files.

That said, QuickTime should have absolutely no problem playing a standard .mpg (MPEG1) file--that's my MPEG player of choice, and I really love it. If they're not working, either there's something seriously wrong with them, or they're actually MPEG2 files, which QT won't play without an additional plug-in. VLC plays MPEG2 just fine, though, so you'll know pretty quickly if that's the issue (the video will probably be quite large if they're MPEG2, and you can check the file type).

Two other things to try: Make sure QT knows it's supposed to play .mpg files (get info on one, select QT Player as the application to handle it), and if they're from VCDs originally, you can try running them through VCDGear and see if they're valid files:

http://www.vcdgear.com/

(I VCDGear is a great app if you do a lot with VCDs.)