playin movies- pls help

i can download shorts movies and play them with no problem on my quicktime which is up to date but when i downloada full legth movie on mpg fomat ( which work to the short movies) it says "couldnt open the filr "(woteva the movie is)because it is not a file that quicktime understand. It is really confussing because i am downloadin on the ame format that the shorter movies usualy work on pls help me, is there a playin program i have to download????

[Lord of the Rings]

Just off-hand, if the file is an mpg as you suggested & QT can't open it, it sounds as though it might be corrupted. Either that or it was encoded in such a way (possibly on a pc) that is not fully supported by the version of QT you have. Do you have the standard or Pro version of QT? I'm not sure about all the ins & outs of QT & the playing diff b/w standard & pro, but there might be an xtra QT codec you need. Pro allows more options. Just a thought. Large QT files don't always transport very well.

[murasame]

Yea, I don't get this one either. Get Info (apple-I) on these files shows them as MPEGs which Quicktime is -normally- able to play.
It's a mystery...
But, don't throw these files right away. First, dld and install VLC player which is a great player (although a little slower and more buggy than Quicktime IMO) and can play many many file formats that Quicktime can't. To get it, Google VLC or simply go to www.videolan.org to get it. It's free and it's great. It even manages the Ogg Vorbis format (although I find that the step forward/backward functions with this format are pretty screwy).

Edit: Ooops. I probably was writing this post at the same time as me Lord.

[rkapsi]

The extension .mpg or .mpeg is common for MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 files. Out of the box is only the former supported by QuickTime. For the latter you must either buy this QuickTime extension or use one of the mentioned players.

[arne_bab]

You might want to download the mplayer ( http://mplayerosx.sf.net ).

I use it for almost all kinds of movies.

[murasame]

Yea, I was gonna mention this one too till I remembered that, with Jaguar I couldn't get anything to play at alll with the damn thing. The List thingy came up all right, but when I tried to play any kind of file, the file's name just appeared on the list and nothing I ever did could make it play (and yes, I tried clicking the big button with the triangle that some fancy calling the "Play" button...).
I'm dlding it now on Panther to see if that was the problem (I hope it was).

[murasame]

Oh YEAH! That's the stuff! It plays now, and I see that it is better than VLC (first impression): the full screen mode doesn't pixelise the picture that much (very little actually) and it even plays perfectly the Ogg Vorbis files which VLC has a little trouble with.
Of course, I've only tried 2 files so far, but it kinda seems better.
Oh, and the step function with Ogg Vorbis files doesn't pixelise/merge/confuses/creates errors with mplayer.
Hmm, hmm. Now I'm a even more glad I upgraded to Panther
Just a question though: how do I select the subtitles on Ogg Vorbis files that have them (if I am at all capable of doing that)?