The problem seems to be the container. I can play the file just fine using this very ugly hack from hell: mencoder -really-quiet crankygeeks.130.mov -oac pcm -ovc raw -o -| /usr/local/bin/mplayer -vo mpegpes -ao mpegpes -vf scale=640:480,expand=640:480:-1:-1:1,lavc=5000:30 -cache 10000 -