Forums | MacLife

The part of the article that I find annoying, is in step 2 where it says, "To preserve your original resolution, click File>Advanced Options. In the drawer that appears, click the Custom Width check box and enter your video's width".

Excuse me, but we don't know the video's width since we can't play it yet. It hasn't been converted to a QT-compatible file.

Am I overlooking something here, or is this a MA gaff?

Last edited by Flavum (2005-04-08 11:22 pm)

I don't think we ever said you _can't_ use Windows Media Player for Mac to play WMV files - we just said you can make 'em play nice with QuickTime. Personally, I'd waste a good amount of time converting files if it spared me from using that skanky WMP.

As for specifying the video's width, um, that's your Zen riddle for today. Ok, it's a gaff, or half a gaff. Sometimes you know the size from the file's title or download info, and if not, guessing the usual standards (ie, widths of 160, 320, 640) is easy enough.

Anyway, sorry for the confusion.

I usually just play them in VLC. The method outlined the the mag seems to use VLC anyway, so I just skip the intermediate step. The only problem is when you get a WMV that uses one of the new codecs that VLC can't read.
Another option is to use Windows Media Player, and record the output with Snapz Pro X 2. (As an aside, can't Ambrosia change the number of modifiers there? Pro, X, 2. Just remove the Pro, there's no "lite" version anyway.)