Flip4Mac WMV is a collection of Windows Media Components for QuickTime that allow you to play, import, and export Windows Media video and audio files on your Mac using your favorite QuickTime-based applications.
Flip4Mac WMV 2.1 Beta (Universal) program is now open to the public.
Changes in this beta release
• Added universal binary support for Intel Macs
• Added playback optimizations for Intel Macs
• Added significant export optimizations for PowerPC Macs
• Added multi language audio support in player
• Added overlay when importing WMV content in trial mode
• Added support for web authors to disable “save as” feature in embedded stream
• Improved support for MMS servers and live streams
• Fixed DCT Blocking issue (progressive deterioration with increasing distance from previous keyframe)
• Fixed encode errors when the audio bit rate is set higher than the video bit rate
Not yet added (planned for final release)
• Fix 2-pass VBR green shift issue
• Updated User Guide
More info and download link: http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_beta.htm
MacDailyNews Note: According to a note on the site, the download “link is no longer active – look for release coming soon.” FYI: We have been using Flip4Mac WMV 2.1.0.24 Beta on Intel-powered Macs for a few weeks now and it seems to work as well as the PowerPC version we’ve used in the past.
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Related articles:
Flip4Mac WMV for Mac OS X goes Universal – June 06, 2006
Windows Media Components for Apple’s QuickTime by Flip4Mac distributed free by Microsoft – January 11, 2006
I was able to grab it yesterday. It’s nice to be able to play WMV files again. Sites should wise-up though and use QuickTime.
Has anyone tried this? When it was first released, the word was that it wasn’t ready for prime-time.
“this link is no longer active”
Plays WMV nicely and even allows you to scrub the movie once loaded. Safari will automatically recognise WM inside the browser through Quicktime. If it can’t play the movie for some reason (rare) it’ll ask you if you want to open in WM Player. I’ve noticed the player will shift and leave some artefacts on the screen when it starts playing that hide the timeline but plays the movie anyway.
I just deleted it from my iMac this morning. It just didn’ work as well as Windows Media Player for streaming movies online. Has it been fixed yet?
Link’s gone. I need it. It works well, far better then Windows Media. It’s been a pain not having it ever since I got my IntelMac.
Not a big fan on this product
I too find windows media player does a better job, esp at adultswim.com. for the record, i am using an imac g4.
Is there another player that will work with the new Macs? I need the plugin but keep missing it by a day or so.
Simply “get info” on Safari and check the use Rosetta checkbox. Install WMP. Then Safari running in Rosetta will use the older WMP internet plugin. Slightly slower, but it works well.
This updates not for me. I was liking the fact that I could download ANY Windows Media from the interenet. My friends would go to sites like Adult Swim and watch the videos stream while i would watch them stream then download them to my Desktop. If I understand right about this update it will not let me do that anyone.
Can Anyone confirm my suspicions?
I would hate to update it and then lose a great feature like “Save As” on most embedded Windows files online.
Has anyone here tried MPlayer for OS X? I know that on Linux boxes that the MPlayer codecs are outstanding.
Does it work with Firefox?
LinuxGuy,
MPlayer and VLC on Mac do not support the WMV 9 codec, which unfortunately a lot of new WMVs are these days. WMV8 support is usually okay.
They support WMV9 under Windows because it piggybacks on Windows’ own binary WMV codecs, and I believe on Linux thanks to WINE support for these same codecs.
It’ll be interesting to see whether these same Windows binary codecs can be used on the latest Macs, since they are Intel-based.
According to what I hear, VLC should soon have full WMV support.
I don’t use sites with WMV at all possible, let my Safari broswer tell them I was unable to view their content and get them to use the clearly supieror Quicktime format.
Plus there might be some sort of EXPLOIT…..
You know M$ products, insecurity BY DESIGN.
whooooo
A quick caveat about using the VLC player browser plugin:
It hijacks your file associations and can cause problems. I do not have it installed myself but have heard about this problem many times – go to the VLC forums:
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?p=63897#63897
the plugin is still beta…….
I didn’t know the Beta was out until this story was posted on the 28th… seems like that would have been newsworthy! I’ve been waiting for this for months… I didn’t hear about the Beta on any of the Apple blogs, though.