avi player for macs

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gimilthedwarf

n00b
Joined
Dec 30, 2002
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54
Hi,

I just switched over to a mac and i'm loving it, but, i have found a problem. I am trying to watch several avi flies, one right after another. To do this on a pc i'd fire up winamp and put them all in a playlist. So i figureded it would be the same on a mac. I dled the newest version of VLC opened the playlist and added the media. Unfortunatly, the audio skips. I've tried using windows media and quick time and they both play the file great, no skips or anything, I just can't find a playlist feature in them. Am I just being stupid and not seeing the option? or is this a real problem? Any suggestions?
 
There is no AVI codec for the Mac. This was an old Indeo codec, licensed by Intel, which was only developed for the Windows platform.

The Mac compatible versions of the Ligos Indeo CODECs were originally developed by Intel for Mac OS 9.x. These CODECs are not Mac OS X Compatible and there is not indication Ligos plans to port them over.

Indeo CODECs are identified by what is called a Four Character Code or "FOURCC". The last two digits of the code represent the version number. There are currently three versions of Indeo CODECs, in widespread use:

*
IV32 (v3.2): Quite widespread version.
*
IV41 (v4.1): Better image quality and transparency masks.
*
IV50 (v5.0): Designed for streaming over the internet.

From here
 
ic, so mac basically got the short end of the stick when it comes to avi's huh

btw, its a brand new 12" iBook, so it should be fast enough to play the files
 
To clear some things up:

AVI is NOT a video format. It's a container format. You do not need any codecs to play AVIs. You do, however, need codecs to play, for example, AVIs that contain DivXs and MP3s, which is probably the most common variant. Like almostinsane said, there is no Indeo codec for Mac OS X, but as far as I've noticed, such files are fairly uncommon anyway, so it's not a big issue.

QuickTime doesn't have a playlist function (hardly surprising, since it's not really intended for that kind of use), but it does have a bookmarks function. Just hit cmd-d and you'll bookmark a file (or stream). Under the Window menu, you can access these bookmarks ("favorites").

Anyway, if VLC skips while playing it and WMP doesn't, there must be something wrong with the file. Windows Media Player for OS X is the most unoptimized piece-of-shit software on the planet. Anyone who's capable of writing an application like that that actually plays videos (which it does, I suppose) is also capable of making it less shitty, so the only logical conclusion is that Microsoft crippled it on purpose. If you think QuickTime for Windows is bad, you should look at WMP for Mac... Blargh. The best course of action is probably to delete it and just ignore all the bad porn that comes in WMV format. ;)

You could always give Mplayer a go, but it's not exactly optimized, either. I did some tests a while ago. When QuickTime and VLC used about 10-15% CPU playing a 3ivX (or something such), Mplayer used 30-50% playing the very same file. But if it works, I guess it doesn't matter much. But if you're using battery power while watching stuff, I really recomend something other than Mplayer, due to the fact that it uses so much CPU power.
 
I use VLC to play back xvid encoded AVI files and they play back just fine. I also made a playlist of about 20 800mb - 1.25gb movies and I could skip to the next one, back to the previous one, move to any point in any of them, and the audio still played just fine. Again, maybe it's a memory thing or your hard drive is too slow.

my specs for comparison: Pb 12", Mac OS Panther (10.3.9), 1.25gb RAM, 5400rpm HD, 1.5ghz G4.
 
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