Playing WMV Files

[laurens]

Hi there. I just bought an iMAC and we can't play WMV files on it. I have downloaded Flip4Mac, Windows Media PLayer for OSX and all we get is a "This file is not a movie file" when we click on WMV files in our downloads. Can someone help? Thanks so much!

 

[spinne1]

Hi there. I just bought an iMAC and we can't play WMV files on it. I have downloaded Flip4Mac, Windows Media PLayer for OSX and all we get is a "This file is not a movie file" when we click on WMV files in our downloads. Can someone help? Thanks so much!

You downloaded Flip4Mac, but did you install it? Second, are you having trouble with web-based wmv files that play within a website or wmv files that you download to your computer? Give me a link to an example file you have trouble playing and I'll see if I can get it to work. I generally have no trouble with wmv files. I don't ever use Windows Media Player at this point, but installing it can't hurt.

As an aside, you should also install Perian for your video playback in general:

http://www.perian.org/

And you should use VLC as your media player for tricky .avi files or whatever files give you trouble in QuickTime:

http://www.videolan.org/mirror.php?file=vlc/0.8.6c/macosx/vlc-0.8.6c.dmg

 

[laurens]

I did install Flip4Mac all the way ... just checked again.

The problem is for wmv files downloaded to the computer, not playing in a browser.

All of the files' icons are a QuickTime symbol but when I click on them they still give the "this is not a movie file" error. Any ideas?

 

[spinne1]

I did install Flip4Mac all the way ... just checked again.

The problem is for wmv files downloaded to the computer, not playing in a browser.

All of the files' icons are a QuickTime symbol but when I click on them they still give the "this is not a movie file" error. Any ideas?

Yeah, give me a link to one of the movies and I'll see it it the file itself or your computer.

And by the way, because of Microsoft's continued efforts to thwart the Mac's growth, they stopped developing codecs for the Mac with WMP9. Despite Flip4Mac, the Mac still can't play some DRMed WMP10 or newer content. Perhaps that is what your files are. The best way to fight this is to let the content producers know that you want to consume their content but that their videos are not Mac-compatible and therefore unavailable to literally many millions of computer users out there. Ask nicely if they will consider releasing their videos in a more Mac-friendly format (like QT or mpg, or to a lesser extent avi.)