I am often sent emails from PCs with attached/embedded video/mpeg - whatever they are. I cannot open these and my Mac crashes when I try to. Why to these open automatically on my PC but not on my Mac? All help gratefully received but please don't be technical. Am I the only one who can't undestand half the stuff on the mcedit group?
:
No, John, I understand about 10%, but isn't it useful to know such clued-up
people??
Hi Keith,
Your problem with video/mpeg attachments may be to do with the mailer you are using, but not necessarily either. An ancient mailer probably doesn't help, but if you lack the proper software to read these movies, well, you can't read them, and that's that.
Happened to a friend of mine on a PC. He sent me some animations downloaded from the Net in .flc format (as in "flick") which crashed his machine, but my iMac read them just fine. He just didn't have the software for the job.
What type of Mac do you use? What version of the OS (system) do you run with it? Do you have QuickTime Player installed in there? (It should read them if it's a recent version.) Does your e-mail program download attachments on your hard disk (Eudora does, and so does AOL) - or else, can you save them to your hard disk without opening them first in your mailer (standard procedure with Netscape Messenger)?
If you have QuickTime Player and you can save and/or retrieve attachments from a download folder on your hard disk, you could try quitting your mailer before launching the mpeg attachments direct from the hard disk like ordinary files to see if QuickTime will kick in to read them without a crash. Worth a check.
I don't understand about two-thirds of it, but I persist in the hope that
something will sink in.
Err - Dan, it wasn't my problem! I was suggesting a possible root to John
Wood's movie-reading query. But if a relatively modern version of QuickTime
is installed there should be no problem with playing MPEG movies. I still
would suspect the mail app first, especially as it isn't a 'true' dedicated
email tool.
keith
/John Wood
Can anyone help? I am often sent emails from PCs with attached/embedded video/mpeg - whatever they are. I cannot open these and my Mac crashes when I try to. Why to these open automatically on my PC but not on my Mac? All help gratefully received but please don't be technical. Am I the only one who can't undestand half the stuff on the mcedit group?
/Perhaps this is something to do with the problem? I notice from the details in your email header that you appear to be using a rather old app for your mail. Is this correct?
/X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Macintosh; I; PPC)
/If so, try using a more up-to-date mail application such as Eudora version 4.2 or newer, or a recent version of Outlook Express. That may fix the problem./
Hey, I couldn't even open the original e-mail about this problem on an old Mac (a 7200) that I was using for the past few days. Every time I tried to open that mail, it caused an instant crash of AOL 5, which otherwise has been working fine. The old Mac has OS 8.6 & 64 megs of RAM.
Helen Garfinkle:
MsRyter
/Hey, I couldn't even open the original e-mail about this problem on an old Mac (a 7200) that I was using for the past few days. Every time I tried to open that mail, it caused an instant crash of AOL 5, which otherwise has been working fine. The old Mac has OS 8.6 & 64 megs of RAM./
I don't think it was the machine that caused the problem. I work on a 7100/66, OS 8.5, with 84 megs of RAM, and I can do anything anyone else can do, just slower. AOL pushes out software before it's ready, and I don't think they pay all that much attention to the Mac version. I usually upgrade months after they've begged me to, because it's such a hassle.
I consistently have crashes when people send me those electronic greeting cards. As a matter of fact, about 95% of my crashes are using AOL ... but I'm not pointing fingers.