Quicktime Codec Round Up
From Hak5
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[edit] There is more than H.264
So you got your sweet Mac and your getting some awesome content "Dude, it's Hak5" but you can only watch it with that lame player that for some reason plays everything beautifully and without failure but does not help with playing stuff in Quicktime and in turn Front Row.
I know it brings me to tears too, that even though it is an Apple computer, sometime it just does not work. Bummer, but there is a way to fix that;
Codec...
Codec...
...Codec...
[edit] Round One - DivX
This is the commercial codec system that has some history.
DivX codec comes packaged in a suite put out by the DivX corperation. The Mac download is availbe in two versions; the free one with some trial stuff, and a pro version that you could pay for if you were that kind of person or just be happy with the free one.
Open up the download and follow the instuctions they give you for the install. That will give you the abilitly to play a bunch of video content that you will find online.
[edit] Round Two - XviD
Xvid is an alternative open source codec to Divx that is usually avaible across multiple OS platforms to be used with many media player and even to some degree the DivX player/decoder. This codec will fill out most of all the video decoding for the .avi files.
The Xvid project site does not have precompiled files for the Apple Mac platform but they do link to a fellow that has been working on putting all this together. It's a pretty clean site so there is not much to look at but it's sweet that he has both Mac platforms avaiable here.
Open the .dmg and move the XviD_Codec v0.5.1.component to HDD/Library/QuickTime folder. The rest of the stuff is optional (who need to keep the licence.txt?) and you can probably just get rid of it all.
[edit] Round Three - ac3
"Ugh! I can't hear anything! What is wrong! Stupid computer!"
Some files have a unique audio portion that is ac3 encoded. Don't worry there is a solution done by a group called trac.
Download this .dmg and mount it to get the goodeis inside. Probably a good idea to rtf the .rtf; but in short copy the A52Codec.component into /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components folder. Then do the same kind of thing to the AC3MovieImport.compontent by copying it into /Library/QuickTime. The preferences are optional and if your that picky you can hold on to them.
[edit] Round Four - Knock down, drag out
This round is a free for all for other miscellaneous codec you can load your system up with that might be missing. They are not nescasary but could be useful for those unique files you may come across. Usually if it don't work in Quicktime after this just get VLC because it will play most anything.
- .3ivx If your into the 90's!
- .wmv Why are you watching a .wmv?
- .ogg/.ogm This can come in handy if you come across this or if you are that picky about quality in Quicktime.