[coolmacdude]

I have a strange problem. Sometimes MPEG-4 content does not play in Quicktime. It says MPEG-4 Video in the info, but then says the required decompressor could not be found. I guess this is using a different type of MPEG video that quicktime doesn't support. I know its not Divx as I have that installed and it works fine. I heard about some other player that could sometimes play these types of files but I forgot the name. Can someone help me out? thanks.

[Uncle Skeleton]

VideoLan Client is the other player

is this an AVI file? if not, when you open it in HexEdit does it start with "RIFF" (in which case it is an avi but named incorrectly). MS-MPEG4v1 (found in AVI and ASF files) used the FourCC of "MPG4", and many years later Apple in it's blissful imposed ignorance of all things DivX, used that same FourCC for it's MPEG-4 codec. So now that FourCC is mapped to the string "MPEG-4 Video" in QuickTime 6, even if after making that association the player discovers that it's really not Apple's MPEG-4 content. It's a namespace collision. There is a QuickTime decoder for MS-MPEG4v1 (also for v2), but because of this namespace collision, you have to change the FourCC of such files (from MPEG4 to MP41) for it to work. Find these decoders on versiontracker.com.

or just use VLC to play them

[coolmacdude]

Ha, you're right. They were AVIs. Just not Divx or Indeo, and I haven't encountered any other type AVIs recently. I'll try that VLC.