What codec do I need for this?

Factual Questions
1

I have some avi movies I’d like to view, but which I can’t get to work. When I open one up in Quicktime and go to “movie inspector”, it tells me

It doesn’t give me any error message, but the movie window shows nothing but a uniform green with no audio. The file size is plausible for a movie of its purported length (828 kB for a 15-second movie), so the data’s probably there; I just don’t know how to read it. If I try to open it in Windows Media Player instead, it just gives me an error message that the file format is invalid.

What do I need to be able to watch this, and where do I get it? I’m using Mac OSX 10.4.11 and Quicktime Player 7.6.4 .

2

Doesn’t seem to unusual at first glance. On OSX I use VLC and I’ve yet to encounter a video it won’t play*. I suggest you try it unless you have specific needs for a Quicktime/WMV compatible codec.

  • MPlayer is traditionally even better for playing pretty much anything, but it’s not nearly as neatly packaged as VLC and the differences are really minimal with some videos/codecs playing better on VLC at the moment.
3

Have you tried DivX Codecs for Mac:

For Windows 7, the only codec pack you’ll ever need is the Shark007 codec pack:

4

Thanks, ((Superfluous)). I’d forgotten that I had mplayer on this machine already, and it opens them, and VLC works too. I’m willing to call this answered, unless anyone has anything they really want to add.