Michael:

Do the videos work after they've been completely downloaded?

"Do the videos work after they've been completely downloaded?"


If they work fine after a complete download, then my theory is incorrect.

Taken from Rosetta Help:

"The Fix Command: Correcting Problem Movie Files
The Fix command allows certain types of movie file problems to be corrected. These problems are often found in movies downloaded from usenet and other places. A standard file dialog is shown allowing the movies files to be fixed to be selected. After clicking on OK, one of two things may happen. The program will first check to see if each selected file seems to be a CDXA format movie file. If it is, it will try to create a new MPEG file that has the CDXA header data removed. Otherwise each file (assumed to be a combined MPEG file) will be split into its constituent movie files. The original files are never modified or moved. If the combined movie file was named ?movie.mpg? and consisted of three joined movies, the result will be three new movie files named ?movie.mpg-1?, ?movie.mpg-2? and ?movie.mpg-3?. Using a QuickTime movie player you should be able to play the new movie files in their entirety. If the movie file you try to split contains just a single MPEG movie then no new files are created. Also note that the original file must be a true MPEG file, and not a QuickTime movie file containing MPEG movie data. The latter kind of file can not be resplit using Rosetta.

Unlike the other features provided by Rosetta, resplitting combined MPEG movies and removing the header from CDXA movies may not always work. The original movies may not be in the proper format, or may be corrupted or be missing data, or otherwise not in a form that Rosetta can handle.

But do the files play w/o using rosetta when they first download? If so, I'm inclined to go with sberlin, and my advice would be to just not preview stuff.

If u need rosetta every time, giev us some more details on what rosetta does to make the file playable. If you can't make the files playable, tell us about that process too.

Blackbird:

Have you seen the issue for yourself? It's weird, and it bugged me for a long time before I stumbled upon a wise woman on the Apple boards who guided me through.

You get a large, maybe 100 MB mpg file, hit play, and the play bar moves much quicker across the field than it should. Then, if you manually move the playbar to the left, you see parts of the video that did not play during normal playback.

Now, whether Rosetta would work on an incomplete file adds more wrinkles in theory at least. I think Michaellloyd will need to see it work on a complete file that is exhibiting the strange behavior and then try and deduce what is occuring.
Can you apply the Rosetta 'fix' to a file in the process of downloading? Don't know, but I tend to think not. I haven't had it happen to me, so I can't weigh in other than this guessing.
Maybe preview just enough to see if it is a file you are interested in, then wait until you have the whole thing to either play it or try to fix it.

Y'all are over my head with some of the tech talk, but I'll try to answer the questions:

Blackbird & Clueless - Yes, the files play when completely downloaded.

Blackbird - Using "Videolan" I can preview the file and watch it when complete. This does not include using "Rosetta" .
What is really nice about "Videolan" as well is that you can drag a scroll bar in the controls window that will take you right to the last part of the movie that has been downloaded. Also cool, using "Open File" and "Recent" you can jump directly to the movie without a bunch of clicks.

Clueless - Thanks for the "Rosetta Help" paragraph.

Blackbird & Clueless - I have used "Rosetta" while a file is being downloaded. It takes whatever is there and splits it up into .mpg-1, mpg-2 mpg-3, etc. These files open only in "Rosetta". None of the movie apps I have will open them. I don't know if "Rosetta" having translated or fixed them has had any effect on the original file or not. Since "Videolan" is working so well, I haven't needed to use it to accomplish the original task.

Clueless - Your second paragraph perfectly describes what I have seen. Since "Videolan" is working perhaps "Quicktime" isn't as robust at decoding on the fly.

Hey there.
If the complete file plays, then we are probably back to the original responses. It's not a Rosetta situation or solution. If you ever come across a complete file that acts up, now you'll have a tactic to try.

Another player that does an excellent job handling lots of different codecs is called
MPlayer. Free!!
I also installed Divx 5.0.x, and the mpeg2 codec that Quicktime offers. I have pretty good luck now with QT 6.3, but I still use MPlayer for problem children. QT is not completely there yet, but it is important to Apple, so it will continue to get better.

Good luck with your downloads.

Thanks again, to all.

Well it sounds like you figured out your problem, so sweet. This'll go to the archives for other people with the same problem.