Can't view some of the mpg files.
 

I'm moving from mp3s to mpgs nowdays.
And immediately I realise that there are some mpg files which you can't play. It downloads alright, but just doesn't play when you try to open. QT won't even send out an error message. You can't tell from the outlook because when download is completed, they look like a perfectly normal QT file.
For instance, "The Sim*son* Too H*t f*r TV" (85,583 Kb)

The only way to avoid wasting your time downloading such files is to launch while downloading. If you can't view it then, you won't be able to see it when dl's complete.

But I would be interested to see if anyone has come up with a clever way around this.

I'm on LW2.1, QT 5 (not pro).

Happy Downloading.

This is something that has always disappointed me about Quicktime. In theory you can view .avi and .mpg, but in practice, I have found a lot that can only be viewed in Windows. I've tried downloading additonal avi. and .mpg codecs for Quicktime but that hasn't helped much. Why Apple can't keep Quicktime up with all Windows standard codecs I don't know.

The only way round this on a Mac is to use Virtual PC (currently at version 5) and open the videos that you can't view with Quicktime in Windows. The drawback is that high quality mpegs will be play jerkily unless you have a G4 or fast G3 (as the emulation slows things down a lot).

If anyone has found codecs that allow them to play all standard Windows video formats on a Mac, I'd be glad to hear from them.

Thanks MacTerminator for the reply.
I suspected so. I don't have a VPC yet, but it's on my shopping list. I probably should download those files and keep them for the day when VPC arrives, in that case.

Thanks again.

You can try searching on www.google.com and type in mac divx and download some programs. Some of them do work, some may not. The one program that i use is divx player 1.0b10, I can't remember where i got it from, myb www.cnet.com/downloads but u hav to have windows 7 player open and quicktime which is kind of lame but it's better than nothing right ;) Here's is another program that sometimes works www.3ivx.com As for VPC true u can use it there, but also PC has the same prob .avi, some mpg & mpeg's files r dvix files and need another program to open it. For my PC @ home I use the divx from www.divx.com My best wishes.......

Latin...............

Many of the files that claim to be in .mpg format are really in Windows Media Player's .asf format. and they could also be the DivX codec like they were talking about.