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Playing .wmv files on an iMac

Morod

Morod

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 1, 2008
1,756
738
On The Nickel, over there....
Hi all,
I knew I was gonna have to cross this bridge...
Family members who are unfortunately still stuck with windows products send me movies from time to time. I want to watch them but I do not want any M$ products on my Al iMac.
I have QuickTime and Perian. Reading through the AVI primer at the top of the page, it looks like I will need Flip4Mac as well. I'm not near my iMac right now, but once I am I will download Flip4Mac. Once I do that and install it, does it work like Perian, in the background and I don't have to do anything else to watch a movie in .wmv on QuickTime?
Thanks for any advice on a noob question. :)
Morod
 
Morod

Morod

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 1, 2008
1,756
738
On The Nickel, over there....
Flip4Mac no help for my .wmv files

Hi again,
So I'm at home, I download Flip4Mac, restart QuickTime (even restarted my iMac), and tried to play the .wmv files from my Download folder in Finder. The Quicktime player window opens, I hit the Play button, and no video/audio. The progress meter runs in Quicktime but no movie. I double-checked to make sure the WMV player downloaded and it did. It's set as the default player for the .wmv files.
Any ideas? Thanks for all the help so far, people!
Morod
 
Osarkon

Osarkon

macrumors 68020
Aug 30, 2006
2,161
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Wales
Morod said:
Hi again,
So I'm at home, I download Flip4Mac, restart QuickTime (even restarted my iMac), and tried to play the .wmv files from my Download folder in Finder. The Quicktime player window opens, I hit the Play button, and no video/audio. The progress meter runs in Quicktime but no movie. I double-checked to make sure the WMV player downloaded and it did. It's set as the default player for the .wmv files.
Any ideas? Thanks for all the help so far, people!
Morod
Click to expand...

I remember reading somewhere that Flip4Mac doesn't support the Wmp version 10 codec, so it could be a case of that. Although I'm not entirely sure if this is still the case, a quick look on the Flip4Mac site doesn't seem to say clearly whether this issue is still there.

At this point I'm also going to recommend VLC. If you ever come across a file you can't open, VLC can 99.9% of the time. I find quicktime to be tempermental with some files anyway.

I know it's not the most ideal solution, but it works alright.
 
Morod

Morod

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 1, 2008
1,756
738
On The Nickel, over there....
VLC no help, must be a sender fault...

Thanks for the suggestion, freeedge369. I went and got VLC, opened it tried to play a movie. The following popped up in the screen of the VLC,

"main: no suitable decoder module for fourcc `WVP2'.
VLC probably does not support this sound or video format."

So I'm guessing the person sending the movie has a problem somewhere. Thanks anyway!
Morod
 
Morod

Morod

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 1, 2008
1,756
738
On The Nickel, over there....
Well here I am answering my own question.
It appears the:

"main: no suitable decoder module for fourcc `WVP2'.
VLC probably does not support this sound or video format."

message refers to an obscure codec by windows, the WVP2, and it pretty much cannot be used by Mac platforms. My luck...
Again thanks to all. Really good suggestions! :)
Morod
 
HLdan

HLdan

macrumors 603
Aug 22, 2007
6,383
0
Morod said:
Well here I am answering my own question.
It appears the:

"main: no suitable decoder module for fourcc `WVP2'.
VLC probably does not support this sound or video format."

message refers to an obscure codec by windows, the WVP2, and it pretty much cannot be used by Mac platforms. My luck...
Again thanks to all. Really good suggestions! :)
Morod
Click to expand...

Hi, could you give us a link to the file and see if we can open it? We can help solve your issue better if we try to see what's happening when we play it.
 
Morod

Morod

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 1, 2008
1,756
738
On The Nickel, over there....
Okay, here's where I show my ignorance...
I'm unsure how to link to it. It's a .wmv file in the Downloads file of my Finder. I tried attaching it to this post but it wasn't a valid extension. If I am able to link to it I certainly will, but as of now I don't know how. :confused:
Thanks for the offer.
Morod

juniper springs-5.wmv
 
Morod

Morod

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 1, 2008
1,756
738
On The Nickel, over there....
Windows Media Player 9 = WVP2

Again, thanks to all. I believe I will try dowser's web site to play these when I get home. As to WVP2, it appears to be a codec from Windows Media Player 9, the last one made for Macs. Apparently it left a lot to be desired. See the link below if you're interested:

http://www.markwilson.co.uk/blog/2007/04/where-are-the-wvp2-codecs-for-quicktime-on-a-mac.htm

"It just goes to show you, it's always something!" Stolen from Rosanne/Gilda.
Morod
 
dowser

dowser

macrumors newbie
Feb 21, 2008
21
3
There’s a special wvp2 codec for windows media player 10 to translate that odd thing, the info text mentions that ”Functionality may be limited on OSes other than Windows XP. See partner site for details.”

The comments from 2004 on the DL page show that this incompatibility problem has inspired some trojan maker and an infamous ”wvp2 plugin” has been bugging some of our fellow PC users...

Windows Media Video 9 Image v2
 
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