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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Quicktime AVI file format

tjman - Sep 26, 2006 - 3:52 pm

i donwloaded a video from limewire with an AVI format and cant open it in quicktime 7. i get this warning message:

"QuickTime is missing the software needed to perform this operation. Unfortunately, it is not available on the QuickTime server"

And i get sent to the QIUICK TIME COMPONENTS page on the apple website.

my question is which third party codec do i donwload and how do i get it to work with quicktime to make the avi file play?

a friend also suggested i just convert the file using ffmpegX?

philippe99 - Sep 26, 2006 - 9:38 pm

Hi and welcome to macosx.com

There many codecs on the Windows side used to code an AVI: Divx is one of the most well known, bu there are other

Yes, ffmepgx will be able to decode/reencode it in a suitable format (QT or DVD); but before, to be sure the movie is good -weel, good image, good sound, good aspect ration, not a porn, ..-, download VLC (www.videolan.org), the most powerfull free player for mac, which can freely handle more codecs that the QT Pro can.

If VLC works, you can use VLC to play it; if you plan, to put on a DVD for playing it in your home DVD player, yes, ffmpegX or Toast7 is required
Otherwise, for being only played on your Mac, VLC is a good tool.

if VLC fails to play it, most of the time the video is based on WMV codecs: throw the AVI file away, you'll spend too much hours and loose too much hairs to transcode it in a classical movie format ;-)

Regards
Philippe

tjman - Sep 27, 2006 - 5:24 pm

thank you philippe

i've downloaded VLC and it is working fine.

i would still consider ffmpegX and toast7 to convert and burn to a dvd. which one is better? and which one is freeware?

thanks

philippe99 - Sep 27, 2006 - 10:14 pm

ffmpegx
http://homepage.mac.com/major4
is a freeware, have tons of possibilities, but requiers some tuning and reading the documentation to well understand how it works

Toast 7 (www.roxio.com) is general purposes burning software (audio, video, data, slideshow, ...). It has great capabilities for encoding/decoding video: lees codecs than ffmpegx but a very friendly interface with only basic questions for tuning the output. Commercial; 80$
Popcorn, a subset of Toast, is only dedicated in video coding, so may be this is also an opportunity for you; I never try it


I use Toast from years for burning and now also for coding videos; more than 95% movies I download using the avi codecs is handled at glance through Toast. Toast is really dedicated to burn DVD for home DVD player or iPod, not for esoteric use !

So:
* ffmpegx: free, powerfull, tons of options for correcting the movie aspect/ratio/sound level, need pratice
* toast 7: commercial, no question, a very few options, "drag, encode, burn", but less codecs

ffmpegx, Toast or Popcorn are not able to rip commercial DVDs

Just a note:
Support on ffmpegx is done through forums and is very usefull
Toast's support is going to degrade each year; sometimes, you have to force the support to stop saying "install the new updaqte, you'll face no problem"

Regards
Philippe