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what is the best video player to use for .wmv files?
- Thread starter WillMak
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Actually I find the Flip4Mac plugin too slow on my 1.25 GHz iBook.
I like using MPlayer for WMV. For newer WMVs, I use the regular Windows Media player. But I use it rarely enough that it doesn't matter.
I like using MPlayer for WMV. For newer WMVs, I use the regular Windows Media player. But I use it rarely enough that it doesn't matter.
Flip4Mac is fee-based. If you don't pay, it plays only part of your .wmv file. VLC and MPlayer can play WMV 8 or older. If your video is WMV 9, then you need WMP 9 for MacOS X, which unlike Flip4Mac, is free. Nothing on the Mac plays WMV 10, but there are still relatively few of these files in the wild.Lacero said:
I use the Flip4Mac plugin. Works like a charm and worth the $10. I don't like having 19 media players...if I can do it in QuickTime, I do ... but I keep an updated version of VLC as a backup. If I can't get it to play with either of these, then it's not worth my time.
Been using Flip4Mac for the last month, and absolutely loving it. Definitely worth the fee. No move wmv files all over my desktop and not having to deal with WMP, = awesome.
The Flip4Mac plug-in is probably the best $10 I have ever spent on software.
The official WMP player is, frankly, useless--aside from being slow, ugly, and having TERRIBLE video quality (particularly scaling), it has a nasty tendency to stall for no reason at all, and it is almost impossible to skip around in a movie--it takes several seconds for the video to kick back in, if it ever does (half the time if the movie is over a minute it just stalls permanently).
I use VLC and QT Player on a regular basis, and MPlayer for stubborn files on occasion, but none of them consistently play most of the WMV files I get my hands on, and they frequently have glitches when they do.
The Flip4Mac plug-in, however, not only produces nice looking video, but you can scrub around in a file remarkably well with only minimal stuttering--better, I daresay, than even most AVI files. It also rarely stalls.
It won't play the absolute newest WMV files, there are a few files it seems to loose synch on (the video plays much more slowly than the audio), and it refuses to play a lot of streaming video (not sure what the difference between what it will and won't play is yet), but in all it works the large majority of the time and I am so glad to be able to avoid MS's worthless player that I'd pay for it again if I needed to.
The official WMP player is, frankly, useless--aside from being slow, ugly, and having TERRIBLE video quality (particularly scaling), it has a nasty tendency to stall for no reason at all, and it is almost impossible to skip around in a movie--it takes several seconds for the video to kick back in, if it ever does (half the time if the movie is over a minute it just stalls permanently).
I use VLC and QT Player on a regular basis, and MPlayer for stubborn files on occasion, but none of them consistently play most of the WMV files I get my hands on, and they frequently have glitches when they do.
The Flip4Mac plug-in, however, not only produces nice looking video, but you can scrub around in a file remarkably well with only minimal stuttering--better, I daresay, than even most AVI files. It also rarely stalls.
It won't play the absolute newest WMV files, there are a few files it seems to loose synch on (the video plays much more slowly than the audio), and it refuses to play a lot of streaming video (not sure what the difference between what it will and won't play is yet), but in all it works the large majority of the time and I am so glad to be able to avoid MS's worthless player that I'd pay for it again if I needed to.
Flip4mac works very well generally, although occasionally you'll run into a video that won't play fully or not at all.
I generally use quicktime. I'll use VLC periodically, I think it's much slowler than quicktime. Often it will be slow to respond when skipping ahead in the video. Also, I find it stalls and crashes way too often. Not to mention the fact that when I try to quit, I'll usually get the colorful pinwheel for a few seconds before it finally just quits.
I'll use mplayer if the video won't work in other programs, there's still some videos that won't work in VLC or quicktime that mplayer can handle.
I like to use realplayer for audio files, obviously not for .wmv though. But they handle music well, as well as quicktime-compatible videos.
Always my last resort, I hate using windows media unless I must.
I generally use quicktime. I'll use VLC periodically, I think it's much slowler than quicktime. Often it will be slow to respond when skipping ahead in the video. Also, I find it stalls and crashes way too often. Not to mention the fact that when I try to quit, I'll usually get the colorful pinwheel for a few seconds before it finally just quits.
I'll use mplayer if the video won't work in other programs, there's still some videos that won't work in VLC or quicktime that mplayer can handle.
I like to use realplayer for audio files, obviously not for .wmv though. But they handle music well, as well as quicktime-compatible videos.
Always my last resort, I hate using windows media unless I must.
Another vote here for QT with the Flip4Mac plugin. Totally worth the $10 for me... it works far better and handles more files than Microsoft's player, in my experience. My only gripe is that QT and OS X don't seem to "know" that QT can handle the .wmv files (QT doesn't show up in my "open with" menu, for example).
Try getting info on a .wmv file and telling QT Player to be the default app for that filetype. It will result in a "blank" icon (since QT Player has no icon associated with the filetype), but double clicking them will open them properly and Player shows up in the "Open With" menu (not that it matters at that point).Ryon said:
The files still feel a little "scabbed in" to QT, but it's totally functional.
The thing I don't like about Flip4Mac is that it seems to bork on WMV streams, and since it registers QT as understanding Windows Media, QT comes up as the default in browsers like Safari to show WMV streams... which then don't work. ARGH!
This is true, but you can halfway get around it by not registering the Flip4Mac plugin as the default WMV player, but setting it as the default program to open .wmv files. If you then set WMV files (only) to save to disk, you can play most of them in QT Player while bypassing stream issues.Cless said:
Of course, it'd be much, MUCH better if F4M would just handle streams, but then I'll take what I can get.
I like this, as WMP just sucks on my machine for streaming inside Safari, though I rarely get a wmv that doesn't load properly with F4M and QTCless said:
To use F4M do you have to have Quicktime professional? I just recently got my Powerbook and I noticed that it didn't come with a "full" version of quicktime I guess.
How/Where would I get F4M?
How/Where would I get F4M?