flip4mac alternative????

[Viro]

Originally Posted by elander

A lot of people don't realise that there are alternatives, and most don't understand that there is a free and easy way to generate for instance Flash video: submit your video to YouTube and then download the result (which nowadays is actually a Flash video containing H.264 encoded video).

Uploading your video to a website in order to download said video again is easy to use? That ignores the fact that most people's upload bandwidth is tiny compared to their download bandwidth.

If you want more control you can always go to H.264 on your own, through ffmpeg (Mac or Linux) or StaxRip (Win 2000/XP), both free and potent applications.

None of them as easy to use as Windows Media Encoder. Free (gratis) is more important to most users than Free (libre). To most users, all the different encoders are just free (gratis). What matters to them is that one is easier to use than the others, and if it plays on the majority of computers out there, why bother getting something else?

[relic]

Originally Posted by Viro

Uploading your video to a website in order to download said video again is easy to use? That ignores the fact that most people's upload bandwidth is tiny compared to their download bandwidth.

Good Point!

Originally Posted by Viro

Free (gratis) is more important to most users than Free (libre).

Sad, but true; excellent choice of words m8!

Not to resurrect a slightly old thread, but I'd like to add that Flip4Mac is not always a reliable Mac OSx/QT solution for WMV files' playback, & neither is the VLC Player.
I've encountered many occasions where certain format of WMV files won't decode no matter what player (or codec library) you use.
MSS2 is an example of a WMV format which won't playback on Mac OSx regardless of the player and/or codecs.
CRAM or MS Video-1 (if my mind serves me right) is yet another WindowsMedia format (which is AVI not WMV, but still) that will not decode w/ QT, nor VLC, nor WMP for Mac....
Obviously the problem lies within these lame wind0ze formats & the folks who choose to encode their product via these formats. It would be much wiser (and easier to most of us mac & *nix users in general) to just encode via a more universal format, such as....I dunno...Anything is better than WMV!

Cheers!