Playing WMV Files in QuickTime Player

There are a couple of choices for playing Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Windows Media Video (WMV) formats on your Mac. You can download the no longer unsupported Windows Media Player 9 from Microsoft at their Mac site Mactopia or you can download the Flip4Mac WMV plug-in for Quicktime. I recommend the latter. After installing Flip4Mac WMV you can play Windows Media files in QuickTime Player and view Windows Media content on the Internet using Safari. You will also be able to change the Flip4Mac preferences in the System Preferences window.

Flip4Mac is an excellent plug-in to Apple’s Quicktime so that you can play Windows Media Audio (WMA) and MPEG-4 format audio and video files through Quicktime, as well as certain AVI files. If you running Snow Leopard, QuickTime X was installed on your Mac. Unfortunately, QuickTime X does not support any 3rd party plug-ins. Apple has made provision for this by supplying QuickTime 7 on the Snow Leopard DVD. You will need to install QuickTime 7.

To install the QuickTime 7 from the Snow Leopard install DVD:

• Insert your Snow Leopard Install DVD.
• Open the Optional Installs folder and double-click "Optional Installs.mpkg".
• Select the QuickTime 7 option and click Continue.
• QuickTime 7 will be installed in your Applications/Utilities folder.
• QuickTime X which is installed in your Applications folder will be left as is.

I typically open .wmv files and then save the file into a .mov file. By saving your files into .mov files, they can be imported into your iTunes library by simply dragging the .mov file into iTunes. So do you still have any WMV files?