AVI animations on Linux or Macintosh platforms

Problem:

I have difficulty playing AVI animations created in my Tecplot product when I try to play them on my Macintosh or Linux platform. When I try to play them on my Linux platform the AVI files work with Xanim but Xanim itself does not work very well anymore. On a Macintosh platform, I use Quicktime but the AVI files that the Tecplot product creates do not open in Quicktime. How can I play my AVI animations effectively on a Linux or Mac platform?

Solution:

In Tecplot 360 2009 you can set the compression algorithm that Tecplot 360 uses when it creates AVI files to any of three options. The default is Color Preserving but if you set this to Lossless Uncompressed instead the resulting AVI animations will play fine in the MPlayer and Xine on Linux and with recent versions of Quicktime on Mac platforms. If you are using a macro to create your AVI animation you can set the compression algorithm to Lossless Uncompressed with this macro command: $!ExportSetup AVICOMPRESSION = LOSSLESSUNCOMPRESSED