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Tom_1515 · Aug 29, 2006, 06:25 PM

Hello, I have joined this website in dire distress...

Me and most members of my household are large fans of the Fox TV show Prison Break. We were all out one night and got back and the episode was just ending. After nearly weeping, I have sucessfully downloaded the missed episode but like 75% of video's it's a .avi. Quicktime will not play it and the only player I could find that would play .avi's is "MPlayer OS X" but it has a hard time and the video was stuttering while the audio was at a normal rate.

Do any of you know of a player that will play .avi's well on my 10.3.9?

slpdLoad · Aug 29, 2006, 06:49 PM

Try VLC.

Tom_1515 · Aug 29, 2006, 07:52 PM

I did try VLC but it would not intall

Thanks anyways... any other thoughts?

Uncle Skeleton · Aug 29, 2006, 10:14 PM

VLC doesn't even have any installation, so...what are you talking about?

Curiosity · Aug 31, 2006, 04:22 PM

VLC has the same problem with some .avi files. It drops frames. It is a problem with not having the right codec. TSCC codec is commonly used to make .avi files, but I was unable to find one to work on an Intel Mac.

Thorzdad · Aug 31, 2006, 09:29 PM

I wouldn't exactly say that the TSCC codec is "commonly" used, but I have run across it once before. You don't say which version of VLC you used. The one time I ran across a TSCC avi, I ran it through VLC. After crashing once, VLC "repaired" the avi and it ran fine.

billy_d_goat · Sep 1, 2006, 09:25 AM

There are several utilities for repairing avi files. If you run one of these before playing it in VLC you should be good.

Curiosity · Sep 2, 2006, 03:04 AM

Originally Posted by billy_d_goat

There are several utilities for repairing avi files. If you run one of these before playing it in VLC you should be good.

Where are these utilities?

I tried using a Google search for avi repair for Mac Intel, and got nowhere. These search engines are getting worse all the time. Some of the words I type in are ignored, and all I get is junk.

Curiosity · Sep 2, 2006, 03:19 AM

Originally Posted by Thorzdad

I wouldn't exactly say that the TSCC codec is "commonly" used, but I have run across it once before. You don't say which version of VLC you used. The one time I ran across a TSCC avi, I ran it through VLC. After crashing once, VLC "repaired" the avi and it ran fine.

I have VLC v. 0.8.5. How do you repair the file?

I had the problem with the video not working at all under Windows. After I installed the TSCC codec, I was able to play that kind of video with anything capable of using .avi files. If the proper codec is not available on the system, how can it use the video?

Thorzdad · Sep 2, 2006, 08:35 AM

VLC should automatically do the repair. If it finds something wrong with the file, it will throw you an alert and offer to repair. All you need do is click "Okay".

Curiosity · Sep 3, 2006, 01:27 AM

Originally Posted by Thorzdad

VLC should automatically do the repair. If it finds something wrong with the file, it will throw you an alert and offer to repair. All you need do is click "Okay".

It does not do that. All it does is produce error message boxes. It does not offer to fix anything.

fritzair · Sep 13, 2006, 02:23 PM

Originally Posted by Tom_1515

Hello, I have joined this website in dire distress...

Me and most members of my household are large fans of the Fox TV show Prison Break. We were all out one night and got back and the episode was just ending. After nearly weeping, I have sucessfully downloaded the missed episode but like 75% of video's it's a .avi. Quicktime will not play it and the only player I could find that would play .avi's is "MPlayer OS X" but it has a hard time and the video was stuttering while the audio was at a normal rate.

Do any of you know of a player that will play .avi's well on my 10.3.9?

You state you have had problems with VLC, but it may be the clip you downloaded.
Try another download, either P2P or torrent and try again. VLC can run anything and does it cleanly.

Thorzdad · Sep 13, 2006, 02:53 PM

Originally Posted by fritzair

...VLC can run anything and does it cleanly.

Wellll...not exactly.
The latest nightly builds for VLC absolutely look like they will play anything (including, finally, WMV3 media) However, the nightly builds will only run on Macs running 10.4. Anyone running 10.3.9 and earlier are, for now, stuck with VLC version 0.8.5, which does not play everything. Almost...but not quite.

From what I can tell, the next stable release of VLC is going to be really great.

analogika · Sep 13, 2006, 06:30 PM

Have you tried MPlayer?

That will play some odd files that VLC won't (yet), though VLC is the nicer program overall.

badidea · Sep 14, 2006, 04:48 AM

One thing is for sure! If you want to play an AVI and MPlayerOSX does have problems then NO OTHER app on OS X will do any better with that particular file!!