video/animation
07/28/2006, 9:05am, EDT
Friday, July 28th
Flip4Mac WMV Player now Universal
Telestream has released an update to Flip4Mac WMV Player, allowing the software to run natively on Intel-based Macs as a Universal Binary. WMV Player originally was introduced near the final days of Microsoft's Windows Media Player for Mac, successfully offerring integration of Windows Media (WM) formats into Apple's QuickTime Player. Since Microsoft cancelled support for Mac OS X, Flip4Mac has stepped into the scene as the sole provider of WMV-, WM-HD- and WM- embedded playback for Mac OS X users. Version 2.1 adds optimizations for both PowerPC and Intel Macs (improving speeds on PPCs by up to 6x), multi-language support in WMA player, overlay when importing WMV content when in trial mode, support to allow Web authors to disable "save as..." command in web plug-in, and improved support for live, MMS, and streamed content. QuickTime 6.5 or later running on Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later is required. [Download - 5.8MB]
Plans for Intel support were originally confirmed at National Association of Broadcasters earlier this year when Telestream announced it would continue its WMV on Mac efforts.
WMV Player Pro ($30) adds support for Importing WMV content to QT and conversion of it. Flip4Mac Studio ($50) offers all lower version features and support for exporting WMV content from QT offering integration with Final Cut Pro and iMovie among others. Studio Pro ($100) allows users to do all the things of lower versions along with creating custom encoding profiles. Studio Pro HD ($180) adds 2-Pass Pro Audio to previously listed features. [Comparison Chart]
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Let's see now. Microsoft has ceased development of WMP for the Mac. This little outfit called Flip4Mac comes up with a FREE (did I say it was FREE!) plugin that allows .wmv, .wma files and streams to play through Quicktime and the first two posters are bitching about it not being good enough. What, are they going to go to every forum and bad-mouth Flip4Mac? Are they going to start a boycott and try to run them out of business? Are they going to file a class action lawsuit to force Flip4Mac to bow to their wishes?
Tell you what, boys. Don't install it and just forget about playing or streaming the supported file formats. I, for one, appreciate the effort Flip4Mac is making. Apple sure hasn't lifted a finger to help Mac users view content that 85% of the world sees as the default format for the web.
Some Mac users are just whining dorks, not satisfied with anything or anybody.
This is definatly recommended software.
Couldn't read most .wmv files? I've ecountered many many more files that don't play in Microsoft's WMP than that don't play with flip4mac.