"Additional software is required for quicktime to playback this media."

Question

Level 1

8 points

"Additional software is required for quicktime to playback this media."

I am trying to open a .mov file with QuickTime, but every time I try, I get the message that additional software is needed to play it. A pop-up window then directs me to a page where I can download a handful of different components. I have no idea which one, if any, would help me to play the movie.

I can press the "play" button, but I only see a black screen, and there is no audio.

I am not very tech savvy at all, so I'm not sure what informatin would be necessary to help answer this question, so I'm just going to copy down some of the video's properties:

VIDEO

-Length: 00:14:19

-Data rate: 2031kbps

-Total bitrate: 2192 kbps

AUDIO

-Bit rate: 160 kbps

Item Type: Quick Time Movie

Size: 224 MB

Also, I am running Windows 7.

Thank you so much--if you can help me out I would really appreciate it!

Windows 7

Posted on May 12, 2011 9:09 AM

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Answer 1

May 12, 2011 9:22 AM in response to sulliv48

.mov is just a container for many different file formats / compression / audio formats. Try the free and very good VLC Player for Mac if he will playback the movie.

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Answer 2

sulliv48 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 12, 2011 9:28 AM in response to Stress Test

I actually already downloaded and tried VLC Player (for Windows), but that was not able to play the file. It came up with the message, "No suitable decoder module: VLC does not support the audio or video format "WMV3". Unfortunately there is no way for you to fix this."

Any other suggestions?

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Answer 3

May 12, 2011 9:47 AM in response to sulliv48

You have a WMP file that was saved (on a Mac) inside a .mov container. Try this:

Duplicate the file. On the duplicate change the file extension from .mov to .wmv and use Windows Media Player to try and open it.

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Answer 4

sulliv48 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 12, 2011 10:24 AM in response to QuickTimeKirk

Okay, I just tried it, and WMP launched but then came up with this message:

"Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file."

Is there anything else I could try?

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Answer 5

May 12, 2011 10:43 AM in response to sulliv48

Sorry.

I don't know what else to try.

It's a complicated world with Windows and Apple and media formats. Microsoft ended support for the Mac OS and their proprietary Windows formats when they switched from the AVI container to the WMP container formats.

Apple (QuickTime) hasn't "changed the rules" and offers both Mac and Windows users a version of their product. Backward compatibility (older formats) still works in most cases.

But your file is really WMP (based on the codecs). It may only work on a Mac that also has a software "bridge" know as Flip4Mac.

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Answer 6

sulliv48 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 12, 2011 3:31 PM in response to QuickTimeKirk

Oh, that's okay. Thank you very much for trying, I really appreciated the effort.

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