Filed under: Multimedia, Software
Yesterday, we wrote about the extraordinary
generosity that Microsoft displayed by distributing the Flip4Mac player available for free. Flip4Mac is a tool that allows you to play WMV files with
Quicktime. Before you get a warm fuzzy for Microsoft, check this out: They've
suspended development of Windows Media Player for Mac OS X. No big loss, of course, especially now that we have an
alternative.Holding the Command key (aka the Apple key) and pressing Tab will cycle through your open applications. It's easier to Cmd-Tab if you are Copy (Cmd-C) and Pasting (Cmd-V) to and from various applications.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
David Hughes said 11:05AM on 1-12-2006
And it is deeply unstable... crashes Safari and Quicktime!
The old version 1 worked fine... MS get involved and it all goes to shit!
Reply
Samuel McConnell said 11:07AM on 1-12-2006
I saw this coming a mile away. Why else would they buy and distribute (for free) Flip4Mac?
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Hank said 11:13AM on 1-12-2006
Oh-oh!!! Flip4Mac can only playback local WMV files. Not streams. This means that Mac users can't view online Windows Media streams anymore? Well perhaps with the current player, which is outdated anyway...
Reply
Thomas Deliduka said 11:20AM on 1-12-2006
BEWARE OF FLIP4MAC! I installed it last night, now I did update to quicktime 7.0.4 and I found later there is an incompatibility, however, when I couldn't get streaming to work in quicktime, I tried to revert back to WMP and now WMP doesn't work AT ALL.
It starts to load the clip/streaming and it simply stops. nothing plays. If I connect to a stream that references multiple files it will load each one successively without playing them just skips each one until the end without playing at all.
I don't know what it changed but I removed everythign having to do with flip4mac AND WMP and reinstalled WMP and it still doesn't work.
Reply
Michael Tanenblatt said 11:21AM on 1-12-2006
It really is unstable. I opened Safari, then used the "File/Open File" menu choice to open the sample movie that comes with Windows Media Player (Windows Media Sample.wmv), and it worked beatifully. Then I closed the Safari window and Safari crashed. I repeated these steps, and got the same crash.
Reply
jasontho said 11:27AM on 1-12-2006
The only problem is that, for me at least, it doesnt work with streaming video site like CNN. It looks like it's going to work but then it just sits there and does nothing.
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George said 11:33AM on 1-12-2006
Calm down! A 2.0.1 update will fix current QuickTime crashes very soon.
You will find it at http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_download.htm
Reply
jorge2k said 11:40AM on 1-12-2006
you need to uninstall wmp first to avoid that problems
Reply
marc cardwell said 11:41AM on 1-12-2006
works on my albook, 10.3.9, using safari on limited tests (i viewed a few movies found on yahoo). on cnn, i did get audio, but no video. can't say i'm very surprised about the announcement, wmp hasn't been updated since '03. at least there are no crashes.
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damien said 11:50AM on 1-12-2006
Ahh yes, the ever awful, sputtering, skipping or not playing movies at all Windows Media Player, which was developed thanks to the open patent agreement between apple & microsoft from '97 to '02. They get the idea & technology from Apple Quicktime, then flood the internet & PCs with their inferior version making it the standard, then stop making it for Macs. And people ask why I hate Microsoft so much?
No Class, stinking dork f**ks. Here's to hoping in the near future Apple releases a version of Mac that runs on PCs & seriously hurts Windows markershare. And here's to Bill gates going blind, deaf & becoming a paraplegic.
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Machine said 12:07PM on 1-12-2006
Every movie I've seen looked ok in the Quicktime Player itself... but using Camino, CNN streaming was very odd. The streaming signal was playing about 1/2 an inch too low, so the lower portion of the of the video flickered and generally looked like garbage.
By the way... the current beta of Camino blows away Firefox on the Mac.
Reply
crstbo623 said 12:15PM on 1-12-2006
I am just sad that I can't stream NPR with Flip4MAC anymore. That did it for me and I immediately uninstalled it and went back to the old WMP.
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Deedas said 2:34PM on 1-12-2006
For one, this sucks for me. I just recently bought flip4mac. Its only $10 but it still ticks me off. Two, flip4mac does not play absolutely everything the official player does. So I really don't think they should have killed WMP for OSX. How can we be sure WMP 11 media will play with flip4mac too? Meh, I saw the trend so I'm not that surprised. I'm sure they'd kill the messenger if it wasn't somewhat tied to Entourage. Maybe they will soon once they realize 2 people total use it. Adium all the way!
Reply
Poncho said 3:23PM on 1-12-2006
WMP sucked ass anyway. I haven't used it in a long time, I just stay well clear of any WMA/WMV files altogether.
Actually, I tried viewing Billy G's keynote for a laugh, but after about 5 minutes of intro music and constant stuttering and rebuffering on a 2Mb DSL line, I remembered why I hate WMP so much.
Cheers;
Poncho
Reply
Antonio said 6:31PM on 1-12-2006
Flip4Mac IS stable with 2.0.1 QT 7.0.4 created a conflict which was easily found and fixed. MS is NOT in charge of Flip4Mac engineering. There are a bunch of darn good engineers at Telestream who make every effort to produce the kind of product we all want with media processing on the Mac. The support side of the company is just as motivated to solve problems, and have everyone satisfied.
If anybody has issues, you must send them an email detailing your problem or request, and they will respond asap...usually within the same day:
http://www.flip4mac.com/request.htm
If you've got a site that won't stream properly, forward that to them. There are tons of different protocols, formats and network varieties, so it's gonna take a little time to cover all those bases.
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Brent said 9:24AM on 1-13-2006
Has anyone had better luck with the new version (v2.0.1) which was released in the last 12-24 hours?
Reply