Look, I’ve been using a Mac for over 6 months now and I run into all sorts of media headaches. I don’t care what anyone says, Windows is much better for media than OS X. If you install a codec in Windows, all of your players know about it and use the codec. Try the same on the Mac. Maybe your player will notice it; maybe not.
Mike sent me a DVD with several *.avi files on it several months ago. I finally found the time to watch one of the videos. I plugged in the DVD and double clicked on Thank You For Smoking. The following error message popped up:
I clicked on continue and installed every piece of software on the website that came up. The result: the same message box coming up every single time I tried to load the video. Thanks for nothing Quicktime.
Luckily, one of the first things that I installed on my Mac when I got it was a program called VLC. VLC is a FREE multimedia player and I consider it a must install for every Mac user. It eliminates the need to use iTunes and Quicktime. More importantly, it actually works. Not only does it work, but it will tell you how your media is encoded.
Take notes Quicktime. This is how media is done.
VLC is also awesome for Windows, or in fact any operating system.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
There’s also a version that will run off of a USB flash drive. Totally awesome for when you are in a computer lab or work environment where you cannot install codecs.