Over the past couple of days I’ve been showing you how to turn your iBook or PowerBook into a mobile multimedia station. We started with hardware requirements, and moved on to audio software. Today we will be taking the next step and looking at video playback.

Mac OS X comes with DVD player software. Unless you have very specific needs, this application should do the trick. Simply put a DVD in your Mac, run the software, and enjoy your favorite flick.

If you want to watch a Video CD or video from a file, VLC Media Player will get the job done. (QuickTime can be used to play back video as well, but you must pay for the Pro version to use it full screen. VLC Media Player has the same feature for free.) VLC Media Player can play DVDs, VCDs, various MPEG formats, AVIs, Windows Media, DivX, DV, and more.

If you find you can’t play certain files, you may have codec issue. A good deal of video files you’ll find lying around are encoded with a late version of DivX or XviD. In either case, download DivX for Mac OS X and the XviD delegate component. This will allow you to view DivX and XviD movies in QuickTime and software which uses QuickTime for playback.

In our next installment I’ll show you several ways to play portable multimedia presentations with your Mac. Combine traditional presentation methods with the multimedia features we’ve talked about over the last few days and you’ll have an excellent educational or sales tool at your fingertips.