Sharing video between MAC and PC

[Silver_Surfer]

Hi,
Any help with this would be much appreciated.
Have a MAC (Leopard) and a PC (XP) at home.
Both have the same version of itunes (9.0.1) running on them. Both have the same version of Quicktime.
When i am on my MAC, and running itunes, i can go to the "Shared" option and see the movies that are in my PC's itunes Library and watch those movies. No problem.
However, if i'm on my PC, and running itunes, i can go to the "Shared" option and see the movies that are in the MAC's Library but CANNOT watch them. They just won't open.
I've tried putting the same movie on both machines, to eliminate the issue if whether its the video files themselves that are different. Same problem. Can play it on the MAC, but not on the PC.
Has anyone ever come across this, and if so is there a fix or that's just the way that it is.

Thanks for the help in advance. Appreciate the advice.

[Satcomer]

Are both computers on the same iTunes account? Are you running any kind of software firewall between the two computers?

[Silver_Surfer]

Yes both machines are on the same account. Can play music between the two. Just not any video.
Both machines are on a private local network. All connections originating and terminating on the local network are allowed. In short no firewall !!

Thanks

[Satcomer]

I was wondering if there was a firewall on in the Windows machine. I ask this because many XP & Vista users use a software firewall and some system come with the Windows firewall turn on. So go to your Control Panels in Windows and see if the Windows firewall is turned on.

Now can each computer ping the other? Plus are you using a hub or a switch?

[CharlieJ]

If I remember correctly iTunes uses the ports 22 & 3689 to stream music.

Charlie

[Silver_Surfer]

Firewall is disabled, and its on a wireless network.
Interestingly enough one video works, but not the rest. i.e can play one video from both the MAC and from the PC. No others work. Its really strange !!!

Thanks for the input guys...

[ElDiabloConCaca]

What format are those videos in? Is the video that successfully plays in a different format, or was it obtained from a different location, than the ones that don't play?

Is it possible that the videos that won't play are MPEG-2 videos, and you have the MPEG-2 plug-in on your Mac computer, but not on the PC?

[Silver_Surfer]

Video's are in the same format, i think Mpeg-4. Will need to check this. Definitely in the same format. They were obtained from the same location.
I thought about plug-ins. Running the same versions of Quicktime on both machines so they should have exactly the same plug-ins. Shouldn't they ???

[ElDiabloConCaca]

The MPEG-2 was a paid download -- effectively an add-on to Quicktime -- in order to play MPEG-2 formatted video. Your videos appear not to be MPEG-2, so this should be a non-issue.

Quicktime does not include many plug-ins, but if you did default Quicktime installs on both machines, then yes, they should include similar functionality (minus any platform-specific functionality, of course). If you manually installed an add-on on one system, though, then it won't be present on the other system (obviously) unless you also installed it there as well.

What happens if you actually copy the video file (instead of streaming and/or sharing) from the Mac to the PC -- will the video then play on the PC?

Open Quicktime on the Mac, then open a movie file. Do a "Get Info" while in Quicktime (command-i) and an "Inspector" or "Information" window should open that has such information as video size, bitrate, codec and runtime. Take a screenshot of that information window and post it here -- it may contain information about why the video plays on one machine and not another.