On Nov 18, 2006, at 12:28 PM, Tannis Baker wrote:
I am often sent, these days, attached media files showing either no
extension or .text. They are not referrred to as encoded but clearly
they are and it is time-consuming to open them. (Which, however, I
would
like to do ....)
According to the clip you sent, it is Base64 encoded. That means you
need to decode it first by dropping onto something like Stuffit
Expander.
These should decode themselves properly in Emailer, but likely the
rest of the MIME headers are screwed up so Emailer doesn't know what
to do with it. Thus Emailer converts the entire raw email into a text
file.
Once you have decoded the attachment, you should be able to open the
WMV file in whatever player you wish to view it in (that can handle a
WMV file). However, that still won't guarantee that you will be able
to play the file. WMV is just a wrapper, the actual codec used in the
video needs to be supported on the machine you are playing it on, and
there are a number of codecs available for windows but not for the Mac.
If you are running OS X, I highly recommend you get the free Flip4Mac
player plugin from flip4mac.com. This will enable Quicktime to play a
large portion of the AVI and WMV files out there. MS no longer offers
Windows Media Player for the Mac, rather they licensed Flip4Mac's
player plug in and are now releasing it for free (previously, the
player plugin was $20, but now it can be had free thanks to MS).
Download it from the Flip4Mac web site as that way you are sure to
get the latest version rather than whatever version MS has cached on
their site.
If you are not running OS X, then the plug in won't work for you, so
you have no choice.
Also, if you are going to regularly play WMV files, then you should
download VLC from VideoLan.org as well. Although QuickTime with
Flip4Mac will play more codecs then VLC, and play them smoother as
well... VLC is great for playing partially damaged video files, as it
will pretty much attempt to play anything it is handed. However, VLC
is also OS X only.
Is there something the sender can do to make things work better for
others? (It is usually my brother who is sending from is PC.)
Tell him to get a Mac?
-chris
<www.mythtech.net>
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