System
Changing from the PC to MAC isn’t such a big problem… as Mac OS X is an operating system that is as simple as Windows. The difficulty for the novice user who wants to be productive immediately, is knowing which applications to use. Which leading programs are equivalent to the ones they use on their Windows machine? This guide should provide you with a lot of tips to help speed up the change!
iTunes and QuickTime are here !
Playing and managing audio files, podcasts and web radios are all handled by iTunes which is a program known well to both PC and Mac users. If you believe that it’s too much of a problem though, then nothing prevents you from using the excellent Songbird. The application works on the PC and Linux as well, and is capable of managing your iPod.
Between Apple and Quicktime, there is a long love story … This is a very good multimedia player for local or streaming audio and video content. To be able to read WMV and WMA files with QuickTime then you will have to install Flip4Mac WMV. So that you can play DivX or XviD files, you simply have to download QuickTime Components.
The Perian codec’s pack
The other solution to be able to play any file is to install a codec pack. On the Mac there is no K-Lite Mega Codec Pack but you do have the excellent Perian. It supports the AVI, DIVX, FLV, MKV and VFW formats, MPEG4 v1 & v2 videos, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, H.263, FLV and SSA/ASS and SRT subtitles. For the audio WMA, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis and MPEG Layer I & II Audio are all supported... Double clicking on the install is all that is required to have access to this real Swiss army knife.
VLC and you’re done!
To listen and watch any multimedia files, you can always choose to just install VLC Media Player, the universal player that is known to all. Like on the PC, it isn’t necessary to install codec’s to watch MPEG 1 & 2, H264, DivX, XviD or WMV videos, while on the audio side you have MP3, AAC, Vorbis, WMA, FLAC, Musepack and AC3 files…
Encoding multimedia files
There is no version of Super by Erightsoft on the Mac. But FFmpegX does have a range of audio and video file encoders available. It integrates a phenomenal number of read and write: MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DIVX, XviD, VOB and VIDEO_TS, Quicktime .MOV, DV, WAV, Real Audio, Real Video, H.263, MP4 H.264, AC3, PCM8/16 bits, WMA-1/2, SUN AU format, MP2, MP3, AAC, 3GP, FPS1, ALAC… The list is indeterminable! The other alternatives are Dr DivX for converting video codec’s of the same, D-Vision which supports the main video formats and Xilisoft Video Converter for Mac…
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