Power Macintosh Apr 12, 2:00 am Unfortunately with the advent of Mac OS X it is becoming increasingly hard to locate software to allow older Macintosh computers to operate. I have a Power Macintosh 8500 upgraded to a 500 MHz G3 and currently have it running Mac OS 9.1. I was interested in being able to play AVI videos on the machine however I have no idea about how to go about it. I believe Quicktime needs some sort of extension or CoDec, I just don't know what the software would be called in order to try and locate it. Do any of you have experience with OS 9 and playing of AVI videos? Any help would be appreciated. -S _________________________________________________________________
Gregg Eshelman Apr 12, 2:25 am Since Microsoft has pretty much abandoned Macintosh for non-Office software, you have to go with 3rd party software to play non-Quicktime videos. AVI is like MOV in that it's a container file format which can hold audio, video and subtitle streams in a wide variety of formats. There's also two types of AVI, old and new. The old type is limited to a maximum of 2 gigabytes. The new type is essentially unlimited in size, except on a FAT16 or FAT32 volume it can only be up to 2 gig. So to play AVI on a Mac a player app must both support the AVI container format and must have codecs for the audio and video streams in the AVI. If you want to display subtitles the player has to have support for that too. The three most common subtitle formats are SRT, SSA (Sub-Station Alpha) and ASS (Advanced Sub-Station). A couple of other container formats you may want to play are OGM (Ogg Media) which usually has an OGG codec compressed audio stream, and MKV (Matroska) which is sort of an advanced version of AVI. There's some audio and video codecs that AVI isn't supposed to be able to contain (but they've been shoehorned in and there are players that'll play the files), Matroska can contain pretty much any sort of video and audio streams. What's become just about the most common video codec is Divx and its open source clone Xvid. (Spelled backwards due to Xvid being reverse engineered from Divx.) For Windows the easiest solution is the CCCP, no not the Soviet Union, the Combined Community Codec Pack, which also includes player software. I dunno of anything comparable for OS X. P.S. Be happy IBM's weird OS/2 version of the AVI format never went aywhere! There's an example AVI that came with OS/2 3.0 that I never could get to play on anything but OS/2 3.0. joshua macdonald Apr 12, 2:53 am ok as for this issue vlc media player always works ;-) in regards,joshua macdonaldMacNova communicationsDartmouth NS(902)401-1966 This e-mail is intended solely for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged information. Any review, dissemination, copying, printing or other use of this e- mail by persons or entities other than the addressee is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please contact the sender immediately and delete the material from any computer and/or device that contains information from or about this email. - Show quoted text - Scott Holder Apr 12, 6:34 am On 4/12/2010 5:00 AM, Power Macintosh wrote: - Show quoted text - I haven't had any personal experience, but a friend of mine one mentioned playing some media with http://www.mireth.com/pub/mvme.html . No personal connection, haven't tried it myself, YMMV, etc etc. There apparently were addons for QT for OS 9 that allowed it to play WMA/WMV, 3ivx, and some other formats, but every link I've found is broken. Might be hiding somewhere on the nooks of the web. Scott Reply Reply to author Forward Report spam Rate this post: Dan View profile More options Apr 12, 7:21 am At 9:00 AM +0000 4/12/2010, Power Macintosh wrote: >Unfortunately with the advent of Mac OS X it is becoming >increasingly hard to locate software to allow older Macintosh >computers to operate. Google is your friend. Especially search these LEM lists. Issues such as this have been discussed over and over. >Power Macintosh 8500 upgraded to a 500 MHz G3 >Mac OS 9.1. >I was interested in being able to play AVI videos on the machine >however I have no idea about how to go about it. I believe Quicktime >needs some sort of extension or CoDec, I just don't know what the >software would be called in order to try and locate it. See the other replies. Bottom line: AVI is a container that can contain data formatted many ways. The most common are: the old Indeo codecs, various MS (some proprietary) wmv, and now DivX. The Indeo codecs are available via Apple's web site. If it's an older windows media video codec, then try this player from Microsoft: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/610326/Windows%20Media%20Player%207.1%20Insta... If it's a newer wmv codec, then you're probably out of luck on OS 9. If it's DivX, then get an older release from divx.com. HTH, - Dan. -- - Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth. King Cheetah Apr 12, 7:53 am Okay, a quick look through my old CD's of retroware, I came up with the following Codecs: AC3, DivX 5.1, Invidia 5, WMA QT, Xvid 4.5, i263 decoder, MPEG2, and Ogg Vorbis. Properly installed in Quicktime 6 yeilds fairly good results in OS 9.2.2. In truth, your best bet is to use a converter like EasyWMV to convert Avi.s into Mpgs or MP4s for playing in classic --- On Mon, 4/12/10, Scott Holder <sc...@iamscott.net> wrote: From: Scott Holder <sc...@iamscott.net> Subject: Re: Playing AVI on Mac OS To: vintage-macs@googlegroups.com Date: Monday, April 12, 2010, 8:34 AM On 4/12/2010 5:00 AM, Power Macintosh wrote: Unfortunately with the advent of Mac OS X it is becoming increasingly hard to locate software to allow older Macintosh computers to operate. I have a Power Macintosh 8500 upgraded to a 500 MHz G3 and currently have it running Mac OS 9.1. I was interested in being able to play AVI videos on the machine however I have no idea about how to go about it. I believe Quicktime needs some sort of extension or CoDec, I just don't know what the software would be called in order to try and locate it. Do any of you have experience with OS 9 and playing of AVI videos? Any help would be appreciated. -S I haven't had any personal experience, but a friend of mine one mentioned playing some media with http://www.mireth.com/pub/mvme.html . No personal connection, haven't tried it myself, YMMV, etc etc. There apparently were addons for QT for OS 9 that allowed it to play WMA/WMV, 3ivx, and some other formats, but every link I've found is broken. Might be hiding somewhere on the nooks of the web. Scott -- ----- You received this message because you are a member of the Vintage Macs group. 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