Videos on macs

[boganlux]

I was trying to watch the hamster-music video. But it said that Quicktime was missing a necessary component.  The hamster video is an .avi. What do I need to download to make my Mac running OS X.2 play it! I want to see some scurrying hamsters making music! Also, weirdly, it won't play some .mpgs I downloaded. It says "Couldn't open the file 'Belle & Sebasian - I'm a Cuckoo.mpg' because it's not a file that Quicktime understands.". Quicktime ought to understand .mpgs! Any idea what's wrong?

[dieblucasdie]

You probably don't have the right video codecs.  Go here and scroll down to video codecs, and download the one of your choose.  I use ffmpeg, which is nice because it's a handy-dandy player and encoder.

EDIT:  Apparently I linked to the Italian version of that page, but scroll down to the links just the same.  FFmpeg is great, but you have to download the individual codecs and install them, which can be a pain.  The plain ol' Divx player is a good backup.

[Lalitree]

I'd say MPlayer, but you need 10.3 for that unless you can track down an older version of MPlayer that's compatible with 10.2.

Browse through these apps to see if any of 'em support 10.2

[Mattycatz]

VLC is a godsend. They support a sick number of formats, and they're compatible with tons of OSs. I can play AVIs just fine on my mac with it.

[boganlux]

Thanks Mattycatz! That actually worked!