WMV with WMA 9.1 not working in WMP 9
 

This is nuts. At work, on my Power Mac G5 2x2GHz I can play pretty much any WMV I throw at WMP 9. At home, on my iMac G5 2Ghz, WMP9 will refuse to play audio tracks in WMV files that are encoded in Windows Media Audio 9.1 format. The video will play, but with no sound, and preceding with a nasty error saying "This file may not play correctly because it was compressed by using a codec that is not supported", while those very same WMV files play and sound fine at work.

One example is this trailer about the videogame Call of Duty

I have tried deleting all traces of WMP9 and reinstalling. That includes the application itself, the internet plug-ins in the global Library named "DRM Plugin.bundle" and "Windows Media Plugin" and the preference files in my user folder named "Windows Media Player Prefs". But the same problem comes up.

I can confirm there is at least one other guy in the universe with the same problem. You can find him asking for help to no avail at this cached message at Google's cache of usenet's microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player.mac.

Any help would be very appreciated.

Edited: Changed the sample wmv link to one weighting only 4 MB

Unfortunately, there's currently nothing on the Mac (Microsoft's Media Player included) that supports playback of WM3 or WM9 audio/video streams or files (or anything with DRM, for that matter). I'm not even sure if Microsoft even supports the Mac version of Media Player, anymore (it was released before WM9 was introduced), or has any future plans for it.

It'd be nice to have MS release a QT component that supported all variations of Windows Media (including DRM), but that'll probably never happen. :)

I am sorry but you are wrong. While WMP 9 might admittedly be accused of being a badly designed application, it does play those formats. Read my post again and notice that I CAN play video+audio of the linked video file at work. It's just at home that *plays* de video but not the sound.

Well, it's not supposed to be able to play the video formats (from Windows Media 3 and 9, at least). Maybe the audio just uses a generic/unspecific/default WM encoding, and nothing really specific to 9? :)

You're the first I've heard mentioning being able to play WM9-format video or audio on the Mac, though. (Not that I disbelieve you, but usually, the consensus is that it doesn't work.) ^_^ (Are you sure the video has both video and audio in WM9-encoded format? Just curious.)

Have you tried deleting the plist for MP on the home G5? Also, you might want to try repairing permissions as well.

Makoto. Have you tried the link I gave in the first post?

Edited: I changed the sample wmv in the first post by other weighting only 4 MB

the link doesnt work for me and Windows Media frequently gives me trouble with Streaming Videos.

Hi. Can you be more specific? It does no work in the sense that it leads to no page or an error page, or in the sense that you have the same problem as I do? I tried again and the link does link to the correct page.

If you prefer to try the clip without streaming try downloading it first. Check the link at the bottom of the page where it says "Right click here to save clip". Instead of that hold the "ctrl" key and press click. You will then have the option to download it to your disk and play it without streaming. It is only around 4MB.

I receive the same error of "codec not supported" wether I stream or download it first and play it then. *At home* that is. At my job neither way gives any error message and plays audio and video just fine.

Just when I gave up on WMVs I realized MPEG 1 video files played through QuickTime Player also had its sound mutted. I was starting to freak out.

Believe it or not, removing the DivX.component, seemingly unrelated to WMP, solved both problems. DivX has already mentioned that their codec was not compatible with 10.4 or QuickTime 7, but nowhere I saw mentioned that the bugs also nullified WMA 9.1 playback in WMP9.

Anyhow, now everything works, and I still have either MPlayer OS X 2 or VLC for those DivX.

Thanks!

Yeah, there's been some reports of QT7 breaking a few components... in addition to DivX, I've heard the Ogg component fails, too. I think there were others, but I was never told what they were. (I'm still using QT6, for the moment.)

I wasn't sure if Media Player used the Quicktime architecture/components for anything... but even if it doesn't, DivX probably installs a framework or something Media Player can use.

No, I haven't visited the link. (too bad there isn't an 'embarrassed' emoticon... :/) Glad to hear you've determined what the problem was.

I'm also experiencing this problem, but I haven't installed DivX on my Mac. I have no idea what has happened, but two days ago I could happily watch WMV files, and now I can't. Also I seem to get the same problem reported with the muted MPG files in Quicktime. *What* is going on?!

--

Dan Lynch

This is bizarre… After reading your message I tried and installed DivX back and rebooted just to make sure. My DivX files now play well in QT7 and WMA9.1 sounds ok in WMV that include them.

I just do not have a clue what is going on. I installed and reinstalled so many files that maybe I missed something.

Things I would delete, if I were you, just in case (even if you mention you do not have any of these, look for them just in case once you had):
- ~/Library/Preferences/Windows Media Favorites (translating from Spanish)
- ~/Library/Preferences/Windows Media Player Prefs
- ~/Library/Preferences/DivX Decoder 5.2 Preferences
- ~/Library/Application Support/Unison/*whatever*/microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player.mac.db (if you have it)
- /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Windows Media Plugin
- /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/DRM Plugin.bundle
- /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin
- /Library/PreferencePanes/WmvPlayer.prefPane
- /Library/QuickTime/Flip4Mac WMV Import.component
- Any other file with name Flip4Mac in your computer
- /Library/Application Support/DivXNetworks
- /Library/QuickTime/DivX 5.component (and whatever other 3rd party QT component you might have)
- /Applications/DivX 5.2.1
- /Applications/Windows Media Player

And reboot. After that try reinstalling Windows Media Player. And tell us what's the result

Tried removing and reinstalling as per your instructions, but still no joy.

Now for something even weirder. I had only just installed the Mac that had started giving me problems with WMP, so I decided to try a re-install. This seemed to fix the problem, but only temporarily! Even after applying all updates and rebooting, WMP was still working just fine, and Quicktime was still playing the audio for MPEG1 files. However, now, just a few hours later, WMP is broken again, despite *nothing* happening on the system in the intervening time! What the hell is going on with WMP?!?!

Luckily I still seem to be able to play WMV files on another Mac (also running Tiger), but I am concerned that this ability may disappear just as easily as it has on my main working machine...

Worried and perplexed

Dan Lynch

OK, *now* I'm confused... Without doing anything whatsoever, WMP is working again... and Quicktime with MPEG1 files...

This is too weird.

I'm running Tiger 10.4.1

I installed WMP 9 to watch a WMV yesterday, then removed all the components that I supposedly needed to in order to uninstall (WMP folder, prefs, browser plugin. The plist file didn't exist).

Today, I installed WMP 9 again, opened the same file, and go the same error message described above!! "this file may not play correctly because it was compressed by using a codec that is not supported"

It plays the video but no audio! It is the SAME file and nothing else has changed except that I shutdown the computer yesterday. I have tried a restart and a reinstall to no avail. I also tried to delete the plist file (which now exists), but again no luck.

Did anyone get a resolution to this one??

OK, I'm totally new to Macs. My friend had suggested that I install VLC, which I did in the past. On hearing my problems, he suggested that I delete the WMP pref file (which I had done without success). We then tried deleting the VLC plist file, which strangely solved the WMP problem (!)

This is a strange problem indeed and unfortunately I don't know that there will be a single solution to it. Given that elmimmo above had success deleting some DivX files (which I don't have installed), it may be some conflicts between WMP and other media players?? Good luck all.

This will not solve anyone's problems, since only WMP can play WMA9. No MPlayer OS X 2, no VLC, no Xyne, no nothing, just WMP.

I think now that deleting DivX had nothing to do with the fix, since I later on installed it back and WMP kept on working OK. My take is that, besides praying and waiting about two weeks, nothing works.

Everyone suffering it seems to have solved it in a complete different way, so I think it might be related to some sort of cache corruption, that, eventually, upon the cache's renewal (not a clue about what cache, though), it gets fixed. I do not know if someone tried one of those tools that wipe all the different caches that Mac OS X keeps.

I am sorry.

Problems with Media Player-codec error
 

I am a victim too of that Media Player nasty error "... codec that is not supported." message. I have tried everytihing that was mentioned in the previous threads but no luck. It used to work then recently it does not. I was wondering if there were any other programs that could be in conflict with it? Also at the same time, one of the game programs that I have, utilizes QuickTime also does not work. When Media player works, the Game works when one does not work the other does not work. I uninstalled both reinstalled and tried one only at a time and still they do not work separately. Other than that everything else I have seems to work fine with audio/video (QT, RealPlayer, VLC). I have the Latest 7.0.1 QT installed.

any help would be appreciated.

Yes, I also mentioned how QT did not play audio from MPEG-1 movies, so in essense, we cannot conclude that WMP is causing the problem, or that it is the problem at all.

As I mentioned, besides the obvious deleting of preferences, permissions repair, DiskWarrioring, etc. I would run something like Tiger cache cleaner (note: I have not even launched that app, so cannot tell how it works and what exactly does) and cross my fingers.

OK, here's the solution.

In your Applications/Utilities folder, run Audio MIDI Setup. In the audio devices tab, change the audio output settings to 44100.0 Hz and 2ch-16bit.

That's it! Apparently this problem is caused by VLC, which switches the audio output settings. Quicktime and WMP really don't like this for some reason and will create audio errors.

Enjoy!

Where did you hear this was being caused by VLC? (I'm not being defensive; I just want to know, since most of the reports I've seen attribute it only to QT7.)

QT7 did it to me...