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First time mac owner - How to play .avi movies?

M

millertalent

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 13, 2010
15
0
Hey everyone, I recently bought a new 15" MacBook Pro :D and it is my first ever mac. I have to say i love it completely and cant wait to start school in the fall with it.

I have lots of movies on my hard drive and they are .avi and .wmv
I downloaded a codec which said I would be able to play both types of files, but I can only play the .wmv ones.

Does anyone have a solution to my problem? I realize this might be a dumb question lol but this is my firs mac and i'm not the most tech savvy guy out there :p

Thanks so much
 
I heard VLC isn't that great. However, some people have suggested a program called Plex.

I looked into this program, and it seems it is a Media Center solution. Is this the correct "Plex" program suggested for playing videos?
 
Perian

Thanks for the advice everyone, I downloaded VLC because it was the first reply and it seems to work fine, just a pain that i have to drag movies into the program to watch them.

What is Perian, should I uninstall VLC and get Perian instead?
 
Does Perian allow playback of XviD files? I believe I downloaded it on my old computer and continued using VLC because Quicktime still wouldn't play a majority of the movie files I've acquired.
 
millertalent said:
Perian

Thanks for the advice everyone, I downloaded VLC because it was the first reply and it seems to work fine, just a pain that i have to drag movies into the program to watch them.

What is Perian, should I uninstall VLC and get Perian instead?
Click to expand...

To always have .avi files open in vlc:
1. right click on the file that you want to play
2. select open with
3. go to other
4. find vlc on the application list
5. click always open with
6. press open

Now all .avi files will open with vlc when you click on them
 
La-vida227 said:
To always have .avi files open in vlc:
1. right click on the file that you want to play
2. select open with
3. go to other
4. find vlc on the application list
5. click always open with
6. press open

Now all .avi files will open with vlc when you click on them
Click to expand...





Sweet thanks :)

lol it just sucks that I have to go to every movie and tell it to do this :p

But thank you so much. I cant belive how helpful people are on this site. As a first time mac owner I have had lots of questions and not once have i been given wrong or bad advice.

Thank you so much to everyone on macrumors who are devoted to helping people get the most out of their mac no matter how complex or simple the problem
 
millertalent said:
Sweet thanks :)

lol it just sucks that I have to go to every movie and tell it to do this :p

But thank you so much. I cant belive how helpful people are on this site. As a first time mac owner I have had lots of questions and not once have i been given wrong or bad advice.

Thank you so much to everyone on macrumors who are devoted to helping people get the most out of their mac no matter how complex or simple the problem
Click to expand...

?

as long as the file is .avi it should open in vlc when you click on it after performing those steps
 
"lol it just sucks that I have to go to every movie and tell it to do this :p"
That was the point of the previous response to your question, that post showed you how to set avi files to always open with VLC. Try double-clicking on an avi file after doing that, you no longer have to do it for every file!
Another good alternative is Movist, with a simple interface that works well for most avi files. It does have some trouble with a few avi files have though.
Welcome to Mac world.:cool:
 
I recommend against VLC personally. I will never understand its popularity. Its decompression is mediocre at best.

Perian and Flip4Mac, both free downloads, will allow QuickTime to play most all files.
 
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