Playing your media files
Want to chill out with a DVD? Get that old Mac singing and dancing with our advice T
here might be an occasion when you want to play the odd movie file or DVD (if your Mac’s optical drive supports them) from time to time. Of course, OS X has always had a software DVD player (not to mention QuickTime Player), but if you’re running an older version of OS X, it’s possible you might have problems playing newer files. Such problems are usually down to the codecs used to encode and decode (hence the name) the audio and video which change, or are updated, from time to time, leaving older media players behind. Fortunately, the open source community comes to the rescue on such occasions, providing us with a couple of regularly updated options.
First, if you have a PowerPC Mac running OS X 10.5, you have the option of using the latest version of the open source player VLC. VLC is kept up-to-date with the latest codecs (copyrights permitting), and will often play video files that older versions QuickTime Player is unable to play. You can download it from videolan.org/vlc/ download-macosx.html.
If you’re using Mac OS 10.4.7 – 10.4.11, you’ll have to use an earlier version, 0.9.10 (download. videolan.org/pub/videolan/ vlc/0.9.10/macosx/vlc-0.9.10-
Older versions of OS X might have problems playing newer files, usually due to the codec
powerpc.dmg), while for OS X 10.3 you’ll need version 0.8.61 (download.videolan.org/pub/ videolan/vlc/0.8.6i/macosx/vlc0.8.6i-powerpc.dmg).
There are versions of VLC available for OS X going back to OS X 10.1. You’ll find these listed at the bottom of the main downloads page, though with older versions you might encounter the same problems with outdated codecs that initially caused you to download VLC in the first place.
MPlayer OSX Extended
Another open source player we’ve found has proved its worth on more than one occasion is MPlayer OS X Extended, which in turn is based on the source code for MPlayer OS X (things can get a little complicated with open source software, but bear with us). MPlayer OS X Extended also incorporates FFMPEG, a frequently updated collection of tools for converting, streaming and playing media files of pretty much all types. In fact, the list of codecs supported by MPlayer OSX Extended is impressive, to say the least. Visit mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/ codecs-status.html for details.
At the time of writing, the current version of MPlayer OS X Extended is Revision 15 for OS X 10.6 and above, which is available from mplayerosx.ch/#downloads.
The Tiger still roars
For PowerPC and OS X 10.5 support, Revision 14 is available from the same page, as is Revision 11, which supports OS X 10.4. Also, as if the inclusion of FFMPEG weren’t enough, there’s an additional pack of codecs available from the same download page that (for Intel Macs) includes Real, Indeo and QuickTime audio formats. The PowerPC package includes only the Real codecs.