The selected video could not be played

[magicboy]

Hello

I have a video, which I access through a network share, using NITO (also tried FILES, with same result). It gives me an error saying: "The selected video could not be played. The format was not recognized".

(PS This is not on all files, but I noticed it on a couple.... )

Anyhow, If I ftp the file to the ATV and use NITO/Files to open and play the files, everything seems to work as expected.

Why is this difference?

[jacarandr]

I have the same issue.. It appears to affect only MP4's I used requiem to covert my M4vs.. they all work fine if i play them over the lan on my PC using windows media player, but the ATV plays only about 50% of the exact same files.. Its obviously not a perian issue, or a network issue.. its some weird bug in the ATV that seems to get randomly picky

[jacarandr]

if you go to settings and utilities and specify mplayer instead of mixed they play just fine! not sure why the ATV decides to use quicktime for some mp4s and mplayer for others..

[max]

You may also try disabling the 'Apple H.264' option located in the Maintenance --> Settings menu. This will improve the variety of files Quicktime can handle on the AppleTV.

[webman2k]

I'm also getting this message when I have it set to "Mixed" and I'm pointing it to an avi file (xvid). Switching it to MPlayer it plays just fine, but it looks like in "Mixed" mode, it's trying to play it in Quicktime, which of course can't play (without Perian) xvid avi files. Shouldn't Nito be associating avi files under Mixed to MPlayer? Is there a settings file or list somewhere which shows which file type are associated to what player under Mixed?

[max]

AVI files will always default to Quicktime. Do you have the Perian codecs installed? If not, these can be installed through the Maintenance --> Install Extras menu.

[webman2k]

AVI files will always default to Quicktime.

Ah, that was educational - thanks (not sarcasm).

I have installed Perian manually, and it works great to play, but there is a known bug that prevents searching backward in an avi using quicktime that crashes Finder. So, the answer would be to use mixed mode, and have MPlayer launch for AVIs and let quicktime handle the formats it does best.

Is there a way to set AVIs to open in Mplayer instead? There must be an xml or plist file somewhere that tells Nito how to handle these things...

Thanks for any help you can provide!

[max]

Your best option is to install the version of Perian that is available through the Maintenance --> Install Extras menu (should overwrite previous version) as this version is optimized for the AppleTV.