[mattspink]

I have a 400Mhz G3 iMac. I have Quicktime 6.4 installed with the DivX plugin. This enables my friends who are mac users (one has a G4 powermac and on the new iBook) to play .avi movies in Quicktime. However, when I try and play a movie it will only play for about 6 seconds before crashing Quicktime, and instead of a picture i get hundreds of multicolur digitised squares!!! However, the sound plays fine.

Anyone got any ideas as to why I am having problems and they are not?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Jacke]

Does this happen with all avi files or just one/a few specific? It could be a badly encoded or corrupted file, unless you've seen it play on other computers.

[mattspink]

I have seen it play on other machines.

[Jacke]

Try installing the 3ivx codec (http://www.3ivx.com) as that is in general better at decoding. It could be that it's an XviD movie, in which case the DivX decoder might act as you described. If that doesn't work you could try VLC or mPlayer.

[mattspink]

Thanks soooooo soooo soooo much m8. You are a bloody star. It worked a treat. Fix with DivX Doctor II and then hey presto....... it plays.

Thank you very much

[mattspink]

Just ONE more question, lol

When i repair with divx doctor II it creates a .mov file as well as keeping the existing .avi file. Both movies play fine, doesn't seem to be any difference except that the .avi is 692Mb and the .mov is only 103Mb.

What is the difference? Can I get rid of the bigger file? Sorry for all the questions!

[Jacke]

What DivX Doctor does is that it creates a "reference" movie that contains only the part that it fixed (the MP3 audio track). So the smaller file contains the fixed audio while it reads the video part from the larger, original file. You can have DivX Doctor make a completely independent movie if you tick the "Make stand-alone movies" box, and then you should get a new file that is approximately the size of the original and you can trash the old one.

But if you're gonna share the movie with Windows users you'd better keep the original avi since they shy away from Quicktime movies...

[The Jackalope]

Why not try using either VLC or Mplayer? Works best for me.

[vvedge]

I also recommend using ffmpeg to recode some of these divx avis. A lot of them are bloated and too bitrate heavy to be played on G3s. Usually below 1000 kpbs is good enought to be played on G3s.

[Grrr]

I've found AVI's to be a pain in the ass on Macs/QT for a long time.. Why on earth Apple cant make it work outta the box themselves i'll never know.. So I gave up with QT and use Mplayer for AVI's now. No problems with that at all..

[larkost]

The reason Apple can't get "avi"s to work is that they are not .avi's but Divx's basterdized into something like avi (they actually break the avi spec...).

Apple cannot use Divx because it uses technology that was pirated from a beta version of a codec that Microsoft wanted the MPEG group to chose as the basis of MPEG4 (but QuickTime won out instead).

If Apple were to start shipping a Divx plugin with QuickTime Microsoft could have them in court, this is also why you see no-one moving to include divx in above-board products.

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by Jacke:
What DivX Doctor does is that it creates a "reference" movie that contains only the part that it fixed (the MP3 audio track). So the smaller file contains the fixed audio while it reads the video part from the larger, original file. You can have DivX Doctor make a completely independent movie if you tick the "Make stand-alone movies" box, and then you should get a new file that is approximately the size of the original and you can trash the old one.

But if you're gonna share the movie with Windows users you'd better keep the original avi since they shy away from Quicktime movies...

So that's why I have some 103 MB QT files instead of the 600 MB AVI files. Must've trashed the AVI thinking all I needed was the QT file. Good to know. I thought it was disk corruption or something bad like that.