Media Player not playing all my avi's

Seanie M

Any clue as to why? I have version 10, and the updates tell me there are no more. All I get is the visual stuff as if I were playing audio.

Seanie.

wavin

have you tried any other software? i found windows media player a bit fickle with what it would play sometimes

maybe real alternative http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm

or vlc media player

zuma

Download:

http://www.free-codecs.com/K_Lite_Codec_Pack_download.htm

It incorporates all the codecs you'll need!

sceptre

AVI is basically a wrapper format (technically it's referred to as a multimedia container format which is pretty much the same rose called something else) and is basically a convenient tag for files that can have video or audio compressed in pretty much any format inside the wrapper. Which isn't very convenient at all at all when you're trying to figure out what the hell you've got as you are but that's the way the format was devised by the blind and deaf monkeys that came up with it.

The good news is that there's a special label called the the FourCC tag that identifies every individual chunk of the file (and for practical purposes generally identifies the format of the entire file) and using a FourCC reader (google for this, the usual program to check used to be GSpot but it may not still be so) you'll be able to tell quite a bit about any particular file you've got for which you're missing a codec (basically the algorithm for compressing or decompressing a file)[1].

Basically you're missing something. Which you already know but unless I've been totally obtuse you've now got at least a vague reason why WMP10 isn't playing all your avi files. The trouble is that you may well need to install more codecs than you'll need to play what you've got as Microsoft only list a limited number of codecs for use with WMP, though there are plenty of others available, in particular at the link made available by the two posters before me. Or you could analyse each file to check what you need but the lazy approach is to just install the K-Lite codec pack linked to in the posts above. Or at a guess, given that you're specifically mentioning audio, the parts that deal with compressed audio, which will probably be highlighted on their own. If your PC is fast enough and you don't care about installing unnecessary crap, just install the lot.

[1]Technically there are other tags like the idx1 tag, the hdrl tag and others but without meaning to be too condescending I don't want to completely confuse you

Seanie M

Thanks for those informative posts guys!

Wavin & zuma,
I'm going to try those codecs and report back here later on. I did try the latest free version of Real Player. It said it needed to download extra codecs to play the files, did the search, and said it couldn't find any!

Sceptre,
nice bunch of info there, I've a bit more insight now into the movie file realm.

Cheers!

Seanie M

Yep, worked guys, its playing the other avi's too in Media Player Classic no problem.

Thanks for the help!