While the Flip4Mac Player is FREE, the ability to convert WMV to MOV is the Import product for $29. If you had the old Player Pro the update to 2.0.1 for that is free too.
FWIW, the new Flip4Mac WMV version 2.0.1 *does* support at least some live streams.
Also, FWIW, I do encourage anyone who finds a site that doesn't work to post on Flip4Mac's forums about it, giving full details, and then they can attempt to support it. The only thing they can't do, and hopefully this is temporary, is support sites like MTV Overdrive that use WM DRM.
Popular sites that use Windows Media:MTV Overdrive
IE for mac is grossly outdated! It's the worst browser ever made. IE for PC is the same way. Speaking as a web developer, IE is horrible. You have to have special exceptions in your markup for IE browsers because Microsoft doesn't want to do things the way everybody else does them. And they think because IE has 80% of the market they can! THEY ARE EVIL!!
I've never run across a site that required me to use IE, but that's just me.
Also, the link to the Flip4Mac plugin is broken.
Worst browser ever made? You're kidding right?
IE 5 was fantastic when it first came out. At the time it was one of the best browsers to grace a consumer OS. It rendered pages beautifully, was quick, and showcased a number of interface elements that have been adopted by most major browsers. Moreover features like it's download manager have really yet to be rivaled... although Mozilla took a stab at it.
The problem is, Microsoft let it rot and die. They didn't update it, and is was one of the worst major OS X ports to date.
Moreover, if you want to see pages that -need- Explorer, get into the enterprise world. However that stuff is, commonly, dependent on Win IE, Mac IE won't cut it. The MS MacBU, rightfully so, tended to push for standards compliance, not proprietary garbage.
Hmm, I paid $10 for WMV Player too and I don't think I ever got a coupon for this. Do you have any more information?
Was cseeman's response helpful?
Here's part of the message I received:
From: flip4macATflip4macDOTcom [obfuscated to inhibit spam harvesting]
Subject: Flip4Mac Announces Major Version 2 Release
Date: January 11, 2006 00:43:00 HST
To receive a total credit of $20 off your next purchase, update to V2.0, then purchase an upgrade from within Flip4Mac System Preferences using the purchase wizard (for automatic $10 off) and enter Coupon Code *** for an additional $10 credit.
Actually, the OpenOffice.org developers are working on a native OSX version already.
I have to say, I think it's a bloated mess.
So I've heard.
Quote:
I've been playing with Pages v2 - very nice software.
Is that "very nice" relative to v1 (which I haven't used) or in general? I resisted buying iWork last year since I didn't have any immediate uses for it but now it could be a worthwhile purchase for some upcoming projects.
OpenOffice may be bloated (or unoptimized, shall I say) but it's a more serious competitor to Office than all other suites combined. It's the only suite that has any chance of putting a dent on Microsofts market share with Office, in the short-to-long term.
All technical merits of iWork aside, it's just not a competitor to Office. Actually, if I could, I'd rather take KOffice of KDE than OpenOffice on the Mac. Its code is clean, efficient, and fast. Written in Qt, and could be ported to OS X much faster and easier than OpenOffice. And by 'ported', I mean re-written in Cocoa and delivered as a native application.
All technical merits of iWork aside, it's just not a competitor to Office. Actually, if I could, I'd rather take KOffice of KDE than OpenOffice on the Mac. Its code is clean, efficient, and fast. Written in Qt, and could be ported to OS X much faster and easier than OpenOffice. And by 'ported', I mean re-written in Cocoa and delivered as a native application.
I've heard similar things, but to my knowledge no-one is working on a Mac port of KOffice. Any idea why no-one is stepping up here?
Maybe no one is doing a native port because there actually is quite a few native wp alternatives out there today: Pages, Appleworks, Mariner Write(+calc), Nisus Writer Express, Mellel, Ragtime, Abiword, Papyrus. All native, all pretty good, although not fullblown MSOffice alternatives...
KOffice is more than a WP. And Qt is cross-platform as of 4.0. So, technicaly, no problemo. I'm just not sure why people don't write a native version of KOffice for OS X. The code is open.
OpenOffice may be bloated (or unoptimized, shall I say) but it's a more serious competitor to Office than all other suites combined. It's the only suite that has any chance of putting a dent on Microsofts market share with Office, in the short-to-long term.
All technical merits of iWork aside, it's just not a competitor to Office. Actually, if I could, I'd rather take KOffice of KDE than OpenOffice on the Mac. Its code is clean, efficient, and fast. Written in Qt, and could be ported to OS X much faster and easier than OpenOffice. And by 'ported', I mean re-written in Cocoa and delivered as a native application.
At the lower home and small business end, I think you're wrong that OpenOffice is the only contender and on the Mac, Office doesn't play in the same corporate spaces the Windows version does so you're much more free to use something else.
The problem is, there's a lack of something else other than bloatware like OpenOffice.org or limited suites like iWork because of MS Office's dominance in file formats. Pages and Keynote IME compete favourably with their counterparts Word and Powerpoint on features. There's a couple of things here or there that aren't in either but on the whole I much rather use Apple's apps than Microsoft's or OpenOffice.org, especially at the bargain price Apple sell iWork at.
Well, I eagerly installed Flip4Mac a week ago thinking that it had to be more "up-to-date" than the many year old Windows Media Player. In that week, I've figured out first hand that it plays far less content (at least content I listen to) than even the old Windows Media Player for Mac does, and I apparently learned that I listen to/watch more Windows Media Player content on the Internet than I thought I did.
I hope they strive to make Flip4Mac a better product. I like how it works as a QuickTime plug-in, but it's pretty useless when I can't listen to most of the things I used to listen to. I had to disable its browser plug-in so I could listen to the content I usually listen to.
Is that "very nice" relative to v1 (which I haven't used) or in general? I resisted buying iWork last year since I didn't have any immediate uses for it but now it could be a worthwhile purchase for some upcoming projects.
Well, I thought Pages v1 was very nice. My only complaint really with it was speed. v2 seems faster but still requires a faster machine than you'd think you'd need for a wordprocessor.
Back in 1988 or so I worked for a company that wrote a wordprocessor for the original 8086 PCs and we had code to show where the cursor was expected to be if the machine could type as fast as the typist and also where it actually was. At times I'm reminded of that in Pages as it tries to reflow text around an irregular object and apply drop shadow in realtime. In normal text document use though it's snappy enough.
The new features in v2 though are worth it IMHO - comments, tables with calculations, image masking, the thumbnail view and much better pdf export. It does endnotes now which I never had a use for anyway but that seems to have been a big issue for some people.
It's £55 and includes Keynote3. Compared to £199 for Word, I'll take Pages.
Well, I eagerly installed Flip4Mac a week ago thinking that it had to be more "up-to-date" than the many year old Windows Media Player. In that week, I've figured out first hand that it plays far less content (at least content I listen to) than even the old Windows Media Player for Mac does, and I apparently learned that I listen to/watch more Windows Media Player content on the Internet than I thought I did.
I hope they strive to make Flip4Mac a better product. I like how it works as a QuickTime plug-in, but it's pretty useless when I can't listen to most of the things I used to listen to. I had to disable its browser plug-in so I could listen to the content I usually listen to.
2.0.1 fixes quite a bit. There may be a possible conflict with DIVX and 3ivx plugins though.
Flip4Mac has a preference so one can swap between Flip4Mac and WMP9 plugin for those pages that will only work with WMP9. This means you don't have to do any manual moving of plugins between the two if you run into an issue.
KOffice is more than a WP. And Qt is cross-platform as of 4.0. So, technicaly, no problemo. I'm just not sure why people don't write a native version of KOffice for OS X. The code is open.
This is interesting.
From what I can Google, it looks like this guy Reed was able to get KOffice working on the Mac in January of 2004.
There was still a lot of work to be done, but I can't find any trail of an active MacOS port since.
I do corporate video and often enough a client has lost all master except the WMV which I must somehow use as a source to edit in FCP. That's a Flip4Mac Import feature that's really a live (business) saver.
And there's always that PC family member who hands you their WMV and asks you to edit them. You'll be able to do that in iMovie on your Mac with Import.
Of course you may have already convinced everyone you know to use Macs which, deep down inside, what we'd all like to do.
For an H.264 world!
Quote:
Originally posted by bedouin
Yeah, I received that message today after sending them an inquiry. I guess $10 for the import is good, except I don't really need it.
[B]At the lower home and small business end, I think you're wrong that OpenOffice is the only contender and on the Mac, Office doesn't play in the same corporate spaces the Windows version does so you're much more free to use something else.
I'm not talking specifically about the Mac, I'm saying OpenOffice is the only serious competitor to Microsoft Office in general.
Quote:
The problem is, there's a lack of something else other than bloatware like OpenOffice.org or limited suites like iWork because of MS Office's dominance in file formats.
I'm not really sure if you can call OpenOffice bloatware. Its code is unoptimized and not very clean, that much is true, but the entire suite is less than 200MB (templates included) whereas iWork comes in a whopping 1.6 GB with templates.
Quote:
Pages and Keynote IME compete favourably with their counterparts Word and Powerpoint on features. There's a couple of things here or there that aren't in either but on the whole I much rather use Apple's apps than Microsoft's or OpenOffice.org, especially at the bargain price Apple sell iWork at.
That's fine, but that still doesn't change the need for a serious suite for OS X, other than Office. I think KOffice is a very good candidate. Hopefully someone takes the time and creates a native Cocoa port of KOffice. It already runs on OS X (as Frank777) said but it utilizes X11.
Of course you may have already convinced everyone you know to use Macs which, deep down inside, what we'd all like to do.
Nope, I've just thankfully never been in a situation where the source tapes weren't available. Printing a lossy format to DVD or tape just can't be good, and it might even look worse when compressed a second time to say, a small QT file.
Though if it makes you money, and the drones are satisfied with it, good!
Comments
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Are you sure?
According to http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_upgrades.htm you need to upgrade to have any kind of export functionality.
http://www.mtve.com/
Originally posted by jegrant
FWIW, the new Flip4Mac WMV version 2.0.1 *does* support at least some live streams.
Also, FWIW, I do encourage anyone who finds a site that doesn't work to post on Flip4Mac's forums about it, giving full details, and then they can attempt to support it. The only thing they can't do, and hopefully this is temporary, is support sites like MTV Overdrive that use WM DRM.
Popular sites that use Windows Media:MTV Overdrive
Originally posted by DeaPeaJay
IE for mac is grossly outdated! It's the worst browser ever made. IE for PC is the same way. Speaking as a web developer, IE is horrible. You have to have special exceptions in your markup for IE browsers because Microsoft doesn't want to do things the way everybody else does them. And they think because IE has 80% of the market they can! THEY ARE EVIL!!
I've never run across a site that required me to use IE, but that's just me.
Also, the link to the Flip4Mac plugin is broken.
Worst browser ever made? You're kidding right?
IE 5 was fantastic when it first came out. At the time it was one of the best browsers to grace a consumer OS. It rendered pages beautifully, was quick, and showcased a number of interface elements that have been adopted by most major browsers. Moreover features like it's download manager have really yet to be rivaled... although Mozilla took a stab at it.
The problem is, Microsoft let it rot and die. They didn't update it, and is was one of the worst major OS X ports to date.
Moreover, if you want to see pages that -need- Explorer, get into the enterprise world. However that stuff is, commonly, dependent on Win IE, Mac IE won't cut it. The MS MacBU, rightfully so, tended to push for standards compliance, not proprietary garbage.
Originally posted by bedouin
Hmm, I paid $10 for WMV Player too and I don't think I ever got a coupon for this. Do you have any more information?
Was cseeman's response helpful?
Here's part of the message I received:
From: flip4macATflip4macDOTcom [obfuscated to inhibit spam harvesting]
Subject: Flip4Mac Announces Major Version 2 Release
Date: January 11, 2006 00:43:00 HST
To receive a total credit of $20 off your next purchase, update to V2.0, then purchase an upgrade from within Flip4Mac System Preferences using the purchase wizard (for automatic $10 off) and enter Coupon Code *** for an additional $10 credit.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Actually, the OpenOffice.org developers are working on a native OSX version already.
I have to say, I think it's a bloated mess.
So I've heard.
I've been playing with Pages v2 - very nice software.
Is that "very nice" relative to v1 (which I haven't used) or in general? I resisted buying iWork last year since I didn't have any immediate uses for it but now it could be a worthwhile purchase for some upcoming projects.
All technical merits of iWork aside, it's just not a competitor to Office. Actually, if I could, I'd rather take KOffice of KDE than OpenOffice on the Mac. Its code is clean, efficient, and fast. Written in Qt, and could be ported to OS X much faster and easier than OpenOffice. And by 'ported', I mean re-written in Cocoa and delivered as a native application.
Originally posted by Gene Clean
All technical merits of iWork aside, it's just not a competitor to Office. Actually, if I could, I'd rather take KOffice of KDE than OpenOffice on the Mac. Its code is clean, efficient, and fast. Written in Qt, and could be ported to OS X much faster and easier than OpenOffice. And by 'ported', I mean re-written in Cocoa and delivered as a native application.
I've heard similar things, but to my knowledge no-one is working on a Mac port of KOffice. Any idea why no-one is stepping up here?
Originally posted by Frank777
I've heard similar things, but to my knowledge no-one is working on a Mac port of KOffice. Any idea why no-one is stepping up here?
There is, but I think most parts of KOffice is very dependent on QT:
Screenshots.
Maybe no one is doing a native port because there actually is quite a few native wp alternatives out there today: Pages, Appleworks, Mariner Write(+calc), Nisus Writer Express, Mellel, Ragtime, Abiword, Papyrus. All native, all pretty good, although not fullblown MSOffice alternatives...
Originally posted by Gene Clean
OpenOffice may be bloated (or unoptimized, shall I say) but it's a more serious competitor to Office than all other suites combined. It's the only suite that has any chance of putting a dent on Microsofts market share with Office, in the short-to-long term.
All technical merits of iWork aside, it's just not a competitor to Office. Actually, if I could, I'd rather take KOffice of KDE than OpenOffice on the Mac. Its code is clean, efficient, and fast. Written in Qt, and could be ported to OS X much faster and easier than OpenOffice. And by 'ported', I mean re-written in Cocoa and delivered as a native application.
At the lower home and small business end, I think you're wrong that OpenOffice is the only contender and on the Mac, Office doesn't play in the same corporate spaces the Windows version does so you're much more free to use something else.
The problem is, there's a lack of something else other than bloatware like OpenOffice.org or limited suites like iWork because of MS Office's dominance in file formats. Pages and Keynote IME compete favourably with their counterparts Word and Powerpoint on features. There's a couple of things here or there that aren't in either but on the whole I much rather use Apple's apps than Microsoft's or OpenOffice.org, especially at the bargain price Apple sell iWork at.
I hope they strive to make Flip4Mac a better product. I like how it works as a QuickTime plug-in, but it's pretty useless when I can't listen to most of the things I used to listen to. I had to disable its browser plug-in so I could listen to the content I usually listen to.
Bummer.
Originally posted by sjk
Is that "very nice" relative to v1 (which I haven't used) or in general? I resisted buying iWork last year since I didn't have any immediate uses for it but now it could be a worthwhile purchase for some upcoming projects.
Well, I thought Pages v1 was very nice. My only complaint really with it was speed. v2 seems faster but still requires a faster machine than you'd think you'd need for a wordprocessor.
Back in 1988 or so I worked for a company that wrote a wordprocessor for the original 8086 PCs and we had code to show where the cursor was expected to be if the machine could type as fast as the typist and also where it actually was. At times I'm reminded of that in Pages as it tries to reflow text around an irregular object and apply drop shadow in realtime. In normal text document use though it's snappy enough.
The new features in v2 though are worth it IMHO - comments, tables with calculations, image masking, the thumbnail view and much better pdf export. It does endnotes now which I never had a use for anyway but that seems to have been a big issue for some people.
It's £55 and includes Keynote3. Compared to £199 for Word, I'll take Pages.
Originally posted by pmjoe
Well, I eagerly installed Flip4Mac a week ago thinking that it had to be more "up-to-date" than the many year old Windows Media Player. In that week, I've figured out first hand that it plays far less content (at least content I listen to) than even the old Windows Media Player for Mac does, and I apparently learned that I listen to/watch more Windows Media Player content on the Internet than I thought I did.
I hope they strive to make Flip4Mac a better product. I like how it works as a QuickTime plug-in, but it's pretty useless when I can't listen to most of the things I used to listen to. I had to disable its browser plug-in so I could listen to the content I usually listen to.
Bummer.
Have you tried the v2.0.1 update?
Flip4Mac has a preference so one can swap between Flip4Mac and WMP9 plugin for those pages that will only work with WMP9. This means you don't have to do any manual moving of plugins between the two if you run into an issue.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Have you tried the v2.0.1 update?
Originally posted by Gene Clean
KOffice is more than a WP. And Qt is cross-platform as of 4.0. So, technicaly, no problemo. I'm just not sure why people don't write a native version of KOffice for OS X. The code is open.
This is interesting.
From what I can Google, it looks like this guy Reed was able to get KOffice working on the Mac in January of 2004.
There was still a lot of work to be done, but I can't find any trail of an active MacOS port since.
Odd.
Originally posted by sjk
Was cseeman's response helpful?
Here's part of the message I received:
Yeah, I received that message today after sending them an inquiry. I guess $10 for the import is good, except I don't really need it.
And there's always that PC family member who hands you their WMV and asks you to edit them. You'll be able to do that in iMovie on your Mac with Import.
Of course you may have already convinced everyone you know to use Macs which, deep down inside, what we'd all like to do.
For an H.264 world!
Originally posted by bedouin
Yeah, I received that message today after sending them an inquiry. I guess $10 for the import is good, except I don't really need it.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
[B]At the lower home and small business end, I think you're wrong that OpenOffice is the only contender and on the Mac, Office doesn't play in the same corporate spaces the Windows version does so you're much more free to use something else.
I'm not talking specifically about the Mac, I'm saying OpenOffice is the only serious competitor to Microsoft Office in general.
The problem is, there's a lack of something else other than bloatware like OpenOffice.org or limited suites like iWork because of MS Office's dominance in file formats.
I'm not really sure if you can call OpenOffice bloatware. Its code is unoptimized and not very clean, that much is true, but the entire suite is less than 200MB (templates included) whereas iWork comes in a whopping 1.6 GB with templates.
Pages and Keynote IME compete favourably with their counterparts Word and Powerpoint on features. There's a couple of things here or there that aren't in either but on the whole I much rather use Apple's apps than Microsoft's or OpenOffice.org, especially at the bargain price Apple sell iWork at.
That's fine, but that still doesn't change the need for a serious suite for OS X, other than Office. I think KOffice is a very good candidate. Hopefully someone takes the time and creates a native Cocoa port of KOffice. It already runs on OS X (as Frank777) said but it utilizes X11.
Originally posted by cseeman
Of course you may have already convinced everyone you know to use Macs which, deep down inside, what we'd all like to do.
Nope, I've just thankfully never been in a situation where the source tapes weren't available. Printing a lossy format to DVD or tape just can't be good, and it might even look worse when compressed a second time to say, a small QT file.
Though if it makes you money, and the drones are satisfied with it, good!