If your system plays my mpeg files, but the quality is poor
(e.g. very grainy),
or
if you get an error about the number of bits in the display,
this may be because your mpeg player is not
having the right options passed to it. For example, I play mpeg
files on a Sun workstation with Solaris, using
UC Berkeley's programme mpeg_play.
To run properly on my machine,
this needs the flag -dither color. Thus I set Netscape to play
mpg files using the command
mpeg_play -quiet -dither color %s
(set under Applications Preferences in Netscape).
If the movie plays too quickly, then it can generally be slowed down by an appropriate option in the player. For example, with UC Berkeley's programme mpeg_play, adding the flag -framerate 10 sets a frame rate of 10 frames per second. To do this you'll need to save the .mpg file on your computer and play it from there; if you run from your browser, it will use the default frame rate, which is 24 frames per second for most of my movies.
If your browser just gives an error when you click on the movie, then you'll need to get yourself an mpeg player. If you are using X-windows on a Unix system then I recommend UC Berkeley's programme mpeg_play. (My mpeg files are made using the mpeg encoder also available free at this site). Alternatively, two good sites giving links to mpeg players for a wide range of systems are MPEG.ORG and Netscape's Helper Applications Page.
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