I found a brief post on Mike Peck’s blog [via theory.isthereason], that talked about installing XviD and AC3 Quicktime components to get Front Row on his Intel Mac to play an XviD encoded video. As you can imagine Front Row’s multimedia capabilities stem from the Quicktime player, so you can’t just download codecs for the video file types you want to play. You actually need to install Quicktime compatible components.
I am going to extend Mike’s post and show you how to play not only XviD files but also 3ivX and DivX videos in Front Row. Go to the pages below and download the Quicktime components, grabbing the ones for Intel if you have an Intel Mac.
For DivX and 3ivX you will need to install their application, which installs the QT components automatically. As for the first two, AC3 and XviD you will need to open up their dmg’s and drag the .component files to the Library/QuickTime folder. The picture below is what my Library/QuickTime folder looks like after I had installed all of the codecs.
Now you can fire up Front Row and play your favorite videos. Even the preview in Front Row plays fine now. However, some files are encoded in proprietary formats so they may not play properly. Let me know if it works for you. Also, fyi, the 3ivX QT component isn’t a Universal Binary, so you won’t get the performance as you do with the XviD component.
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Nice explaination. Even though I keep finding these things, it’s great you actually went ahead to test them :)
Actually, I think it won’t work at all unless you run Quicktime / Front Row in Rosetta. At least that’s how it works for things like Flip4Mac.
Speaking of Flip4Mac, you missed WMV in the list. Anyway, great tip.
Flip4Mac isn’t a UB yet and it won’t even let me install it without some hack, which I have bookmarked somewhere.
Just to add on, you can avoid having to install 3ivx by showing the package contents of the ‘Install 3ivx’ file in the disk image and extracting the codec directly from Contents > Resources > Installer Items.
Flip4Mac is pretty weak for casual playback compared to the Universal Binary of PopWire’s solution:
http://www.popwire.com/product_info.php?cPath=1&products_id=7&osCsid=b54e7e1e6228aee8bd6f471964631722
Not only does it allow for full clip playback (as opposed to the half-clip of their competitor), but in my limited testing it appears to like many files Flip4Mac does not.
Installing Toast 7.x also installs the DIVX component.
have tried multiple ac3 components, the one mentioned above is the only one i can get to play ac3, yet is very unreliable. crashes constantly. i end up having to move the ac3 comp out, play the movie file then move the ac3 comp in again. it will then sometimes work, never works in frontrow. any suggestions?
running an intel
Thanks a lot. Really needed to play xvid in FrontRow..
Latest divx networks codec plays fine on the Macbook, and even streams data from a shared windows drive to quicktime and frontrow. Not sure what the Xvid codec adds. AC3 audio of course doesn’t play, but after installing the linked AC3 component above, the same video will cause quicktime to exit immediately. Also, it should be noted that by default there was no Quicktime folder under Library for me, and I had to create it, after searching around for a while for it.
The AC3 and XviD links seem to be down. Every place I can find on the internet refers to these download locations! Anyone have the files they can put up somewhere?
Get a more reliable AC3 codec here: http://trac.cod3r.com/a52codec/
I only have Divx and this AC3 codec installed and everything seems to work reasonably well, so far. (The 3ivX codec won’t work unless you force QTPlayer to open under Rosetta, wich kind of beats the purpose of getting Universal Binary versions of the other codecs.)
this is the only ac3 decoder that worked for me in quicktime as well – the original one crashed quicktime mmediately…
you know….my windows laptop has all sorts of codec packs out tehre and these thigs are easy to get at…i’ve spent the last 5 hours trying to figure out the ac3 codec for mac…so much for an “easy” switch!!
Removing the 3vix codec on my intel macbook pro stopped front row from crashing whenever i tried to play an avi file. So, I’m guessing the 3vix codec conflicts with ac3 somehow. Hope this helps someone..
Instead of using all the different codecs from everyone, which has caused crashes for me, I found Perian which plays virtually all the popular file formats, but you’ll still need flip4mac for wmv.
The only thing that’s missing is an a52 audio codec, which can be found here in universal binary: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/27300
Great tip, Paul!
And great to see you wrting useful tips again after trying to be some combo of CNet and Maccentral for some months now… ;-)
I am using perian too, but am curious if using the separate components gives better performance? Does anybody know?
I found that the Avi Importer adversely affects Final Cut Pro Studio which means that I can’t run both at the same time. I’m using the XviD Delegate to get it working instead. I’ll see if I can get the ac3 to work too.
I LOVE YOU!! I did it and it worked!! I’m not a programmer or have any clue how to use these things … just got a Macbook, and I’m very happy that I can watch Xvids on it now!! :D Thank you!
I know this is over a year old, but THANK YOU.
Perian_1.0 <- all u need.
@Zup – Perian wasn’t around when I wrote this article. ;-)
http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/09/30/perian-bringing-vlc-like-compatiblity-to-quicktime/
Hi all. I installed Perian and my QuickTime plays DivXes and XVids but when I start the same movie in front row I only see black screen. No video and no audioa :(. Any tips to what I should check or try?
System 1.4.10
MacBook Pro latest version
Thanks
I installed perian and threw a couple of files into the movies folder in the home directory. I tried to watch some anime but it only played an 11 sec clip.
Any suggestions??
this is kinda sorta working with the latest version of quicktime. I can play any of my video files, but get no audio on any of them.
I note that Christoph Nageli (the author of the OS X “XviD_Codec 1.0 alpha.component”) has stated that the OS X XviD component has some unresolved incompatibilities:
(snip)
It seems that there are currently incompatibilities with the following applications:
- Elgato EyeTV
- Roxio Toast
- May conflict with the World of Warcraft cinematic sound when playing that game and watching a movie.
I unfortunately do not own any of these applications and the crash reports I received do not allow any conclusions about why the above applications crash.
(snip)
and that Christoph Nageli welcomes feedback about the OS X XviD component:
(snip)
Feedback is very welcome, especially bugs. You can mail to chn1@ mac. com
(snip)
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