Chris Pirillo » quicktime

How to Use .AVI Files on OS X

Chris Pirillo — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:00:40 +0000

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Matt Ryan is one of the bloggers on LockerGnome. He is an expert at being a Frugal Geek – he also has great tips and tricks in many areas of technology. A community member recently emailed to ask him how to play .AVI files on QuickTime within OS X. Luckily, Matt had the answer – as usual!

There are many different applications which can be used to play back these particular files on your Mac. However, many of them are convoluted and confusing. While some of you may be uber geeks, not everyone is. What the masses need is something simple which allows them to play their files without fuss and muss.

Perian is the “Swiss Army Knife for QuickTime.” It’s an open-source (free!) project which adds support for several different file types to your installation of QuickTime:

File formats – AVI, DIVX, FLV, MKV, GVI, VP6, and VFW
Video types – MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, Sorenson H.263, FLV/Sorenson Spark, FSV1, VP6, H263i, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Snow, NuppelVideo, Techsmith Screen Capture, DosBox Capture
Audio types – Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), and MPEG Layer I & II Audio, True Audio, DTS Coherent Acoustics, Nellymoser ASAO
AVI support – for AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, VBR MP3 and more
Subtitle support – for SSA/ASS, SRT, SAMI

Once you arrive on the Perian site, click on the Download tab and download the file. A click on that saved file will mount it very quickly to begin the installation process. Click “Perian.prefpane” on the left and your system preferences page will be pulled up.

After choosing whether to allow access for only yourself or all users, you’ll be asked to enter your administrator password twice. The first entry allows the program to install and the second gives permission to make changes to the system. Once you’ve stepped through this process, Perian is now installed – you never have to deal with it again.

Your video files will now play seamlessly within OS X without having to grab extra codecs or software. Matt has proven once again that you don’t have to be rich to enjoy technology.

How to Use .AVI Files on OS X

Speed Up MP4 Video Encoding

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:06:05 +0000

Speed Up MP4 Video Encoding

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – If you do any video encoding, you know how long of a process it can be at times. Before I went to Germany, I used Visual Hub to encode several videos, and it literally took days!

I wish I had known about the Elgato Turbo.264 back then. This little USB-like device takes much of the work out of encoding, and significantly speeds up the process. While in Germany, I used iMovie to encode some videos I threw up on YouTube, including the one where Ponzi speeding around the GM test track.

Videos can take a surprisingly long time to encode – sometimes longer than the actual playing time. What’s more, video encoding can demand a sizeable chunk of system resources. How long and how much depends on the processor speed of your Mac, the length and complexity of the source video, the size of the video file, and the amount of video compression required for the desired end result

Turbo.264 accelerates video encoding up to four times faster on Macs with Intel Core processors.

You have a collection of videos on your Mac. They’re movies you downloaded from your camcorder or digital camera, or perhaps projects you created yourself with iMovie. They could be short video clips that friends and family sent you by email, or TV shows, music videos, and movies that you recorded with EyeTV.

How do you make them iTunes-ready for your iPod or Apple TV? How do you put them on a Sony PSP?

The solution is Turbo.264, a blazingly fast and easy-to-use video encoder with a high-perfomance engine. Use the included software to convert your Mac videos one at a time or in a batch; The application drops the converted file(s) into iTunes for you, ready to synch automatically with your iPod, Apple TV or iPhone. Alternatively, plug in Turbo.264 while you use the MP4 export command of popular Macintosh video applications. Not only does Turbo.264 get the job done faster, it frees up your processor for other tasks. Think of it as a “co-processor” for your Mac.

The software application that comes with Elgato Turbo.264 offers an easy-to-use choice of five presets: iPod High, iPod Standard, Sony PSP, Apple TV, and iPhone. For Apple TV content, the quality of videos encoded with Turbo.264 software is unrivaled: Turbo.264 converts standard definition television recordings without scaling so that recordings appear on Apple TV in the same resolution they were recorded.

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Formats Available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4) Flash Video (.flv) MP3 Audio (.mp3)

Speed Up MP4 Video Encoding

QuickTime vs. RealPlayer vs. Windows Media Player

Chris Pirillo — Tue, 22 May 2007 01:17:44 +0000

QuickTime vs. RealPlayer vs. Windows Media Player

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – Roadblock asks which is better: QuickTime, Real Player, or Windows Media Player?

It depends on what you want to use them for. I you want to just play MP3 files then any of those players will do; however, if you want to use specific files (MOV, WMA, etc.), you’ll probably want to use the media player built specifically for that format.

QuickTime is a popular choice from Apple, which support the infamous MOV file format:

Whether you are creating content for delivery on cell phones, broadcast, or the Internet, or a software developer looking to take your application to the next level, QuickTime provides the most comprehensive platform in the industry.

With a rock-solid foundation that you can trust and a host of innovative features that create the most cutting-edge multimedia experiences for your customers, QuickTime is the obvious choice for all of your digital media needs.

RealPlayer has a sordid past but has recently undergone a dramatic change (although it still bundles SuperPass with its software install):

Whether your’re downloading music, burning CDs or watching a ballgame, RealPlayer gives you greater control of your media than any player out there. Download, surf, boogie and burn with these incredible RealPlayer features.

For the Windows user in all of us, there’s Windows Media Player (wMP to the geeks out there):

Windows Media Player 11 offers great new ways to store and enjoy all your music, video, pictures, and recorded TV. Play it, view it, and sync it to a portable device for enjoying on the go or even share with devices around your home – all from one place.

The chatroom recommends VLC, a media player that plays practically everything:

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, etc.) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

So, what media player do you use?

Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4), MP3 Audio (.mp3), Microsoft Video (.avi), Flash Video (.flv)

QuickTime vs. RealPlayer vs. Windows Media Player