How to Play WMV Video on Mac OS X (Snow Leopard included)

Since WMV’s compatibility with Mac system is not very satisfying, many Mac users find it impossible for them to play the their own WMV videos or WMV videos sent by their friends who have PCs. This article is about how to play WMV video on Mac (Snow Leopard included), introduces four most popular ways to play WMV videos and some WMV conversion apps.

Part 1: How to play WMV on Mac (Snow Leopard included)

VLC Media Player (Highly Recommended, Compatible with Snow Leopard)
Mac users can use VLC media player to play WMV files and the output quality is quite satisfying. This player is an open source, free software media player written by the VideoLAN project. I highly recommend this player as I think it’s the most powerful media player ever! It supports a wide range of video and audio formats, as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs and streaming protocols. Plus, it’s one of the most platform-independent players available, with versions for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BeOS, Syllable, BSD, MorphOS, Solaris and Sharp Zaurus.
Windows Media Player 9 for Mac

windows-media -player


Windows Media Player 9 for Mac developed by Microsoft for Mac users to playback both local and streamed WMV and WMA files. It’s available as a download free of charge, but Microsoft seemed to attach little importance to it because it announced that there were no plans for the upgrade of the player.

In general, this player meets the needs of playing WMV files on Mac. However, the discontinue upgrade decision did cause trouble to Mac users. This player supports Apple Mac OS X version 10.1.5 or later (latest release of version 10.2.x recommended) when it was released in 2003. Some Leopard OS users find it really a headache to unzip the player 9 download or to get this player to work normally. So if your system is not supported by this player, turn to other solutions.

Flip 4 Mac ( Flip4mac WMV Beta supports Mac OS X Snow Leopard )

As mentioned in the above that Microsoft won’t upgrade windows media player 9, Microsoft did offer an alternative for Mac users: Windows Media® Components for QuickTime Flip4Mac, which is developed by Telestream. With this QuickTime component, you can play WMV and WMA files directly in QuickTime Player and watch streamed WMV videos.

If you want to edit, convert or encode the WMV files, they offer more commercial tools, but the price is relatively high and the WMV Studio Pro HD cost whooping $179.

Part 2: Convert WMV on Mac (Snow Leopard included)

WMV File Conversion

If you just want to play WMV videos on Mac, you can choose one of the above ways to do it. I personally prefer VLC player considering its powerful functions. But for converting WMV videos, a video conversion program is a more sensible choice. A video converter is like an integration of all video format components.

WMV Studio, which is one of the Flip4Mac component series, can do the conversion. It cost $49 but can only convert WMV to MOV file. In comparison, iSkysoft Video Converter for Mac cost only $35. It supports all video conversion on Mac, including convert WMV to MOV, MP4, iTunes, iMovie, etc. If you don’t want to pay extra $49 for like AVI component, get a video converter.

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How to download WMV videos to Mac

Internet provides bountiful resources for people to achieve all kinds of materials and information. You might find some awesome WMV videos or movies on the web and want to save them to you Mac or put them to your iPod, iPhone, PSP, etc. so you can enjoy them on the go and whenever you want. This article is about how to download WMV videos from the web.

For some WMV video sharing websites, you can just right click or “Control + left click” the video and select “Save source as” to save the video to your Mac. Safari required QuickTime Pro to download the video, while you only need QuickTime in Firefox. So if you don't want to pay $29.99 for QuickTime Pro, you can just install Firefox.

If you can't save them directly, try to download them this way:

Step 1: Right click the blank space of the webpage and select “View Source” in Safari and “View page Source” in Firefox.
Step 2: Press down “Command” and click “F” to quick search the video URL with key words. For instance, enter Video and look through to find the URL.
Step 3: Copy the URL and paste it the address bar of your browser and click “Enter”. There will be a pop-up window asking whether to save or open the file.

You might want to know: How to play DRM WMV videos on Mac

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How to store commercial DVD and watch without disc on Mac

Watching movies is an essential part of our leisure life on weekends. Many moviegoers have tons of DVD on the shelf. We may waste lots of time to find the DVD, specially the commercial DVDs. We have to take the disc if we want to watch movies on our travel. Sometimes the discs may be gotten ruined by scratches. We need a way to manage our personal DVDs collection and watch without disc.

Now, we can store DVD movies on your Mac with DVD-Library, a new utility that creates an image of the DVD on our hard drive so we can watch without the disc on Mac.



The image preserves the quality, navigation and special features of the original DVD and can be played using Apple's DVD Player or Front Row. DVD-Library allows you to play your images on any computer that you own but does not allow you to share your images with others. It can help you keep track of your DVDs in particular.

It's nice to have perfect quality one for one copies of my favorites right on my hard drive when I travel, and the "DVD boxes" are a nice touch. Although the images take up a good bit of space, I keep my main library on a backup drive and rotate images on my Macbook before I leave for a trip, or simply take the drive with me. This is a great solution for watching movies on a notebook and keeping DVDs from getting ruined by scratches.

DVD-Library requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later. The beta is FREE.

Here is the user guide: How to use DVD-Library to store commercial DVD on Mac?

From: How to store commercial DVD and watch without disc on Mac?