The only way to convert is on Windows with programs from Microsoft.ġ. How to run that nice PhotoStory that your friend or colleague made on your MacOS? So if Mediainfo shows that your WMV file is a PhotoStory file there is no way to play it on MacOS!Īs far as I know there are also no Mac media converter programs that support the WVP2 PhotoStory codec.

Unfortunately both of these programs do NOT support the PhotoStory WMV codec !! In order to play WMV files on MacOS one could use the FLV Player or the Quicktime extension Flip4Mac ( ) 0ĭescription of the codec : Windows Media Video 9.1 Imageĭescription of the codec : Windows Media Audio 9.2 - VBR Quality 98, 48 kHz, stereo 1-pass VBR Writing application : Photo Story 3 for Windows. The output of Mediainfo for a PhotoStory WMV file looks as below: One way to find out what is inside the WMV container is a free program Mediainfo. (The 'standard' WMV codec is Windows Media Video 7/8/9 or 9 Advanced )įor the users it is very confusing that WMV files can have used different codecs and therefor some WMV files work with video player programs and others don't!

The codec used in PhotoStory is the Windows Media Video 9 Image (WVP2). The use of a special codec makes the Windows PhotoStory WMV output incompatible to programs that normally support WMV files.

As the PhotoStory WMV codec did not need to support moving images Microsoft could achieve a very high compression for the PhotoStory WMV output. Memory and disk space was scarse in those days. When Microsoft originally developed Photo Story in 2004 it developed also a special compression algorithm (codec) to achieve a high compression rate.

Watch wmv files on mac