Video Problem

[ChuckR]

I run Windows 7 Professional. I believe, but can't seem to locate, that I am using Media Player 12. My son took a video at my birthday but it only plays a few seconds and hangs for the rest of the time. Here is the information I have so far on his system.

I'm running Windows XP on my laptop. I'm not sure which multimedia format the laptop used. I use Picassa 3 to upload photos and videos, then I just click on the icon to view. However, I'm not sure if that is where I viewed the
video. I may have used Canon utilities at the time to view it. That's the brand of my camera. I remember also having problems viewing the disc on my laptop. I'm also not sure which program my laptop used to compress the file.

The compression was trying to get the video under his 25mb limit on sending the video.

Can anyone help with how to run this video, or find out the problem? With my playing around trying to get it to work I did get a message about a missing codec, but the stupid message gave no help on what codec or where to get the one it wanted.

 

[Binky]

The easiest solution is to install VLC player. It includes many codecs so you might not have to install anything else.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

 

[gsaldivar]

Another option is to install FFDShow. Once installed, try playing the video again in Media Player. FFDshow will automatically assist with rendering the video if possible. If it works, you will see a little FFD icon in the tray (lower right) during playback.

http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/

If all fails, GSpot is a utility that you can use analyze the video file and determine the codec required for playback.

http://www.headbands.com/gspot/v26x/quick_start.html
Good luck!

 

[ChuckR]

Thanks for the pointer to GSpot. It gives excellent information. It seems the file has issues, but the codecs needed are there. VLC did no good, or no bad. Just the same result as Media player.

 

[Fardringle]

If the original video (directly from the camera) plays correctly, then something corrupted the file when you compressed it to a smaller size. What program are you using to compress/re-encode the video? And have you tried encoding it again to see if you can get a good result?

 

[ChuckR]

It was my son, who is now back in Virginia, that captured it.
So far he isn't sure how he compressed it.

 

[gsaldivar]

Also try pressing the buttons on the bottom left of the Gspot window. It will try to determine if there is a system problem playing the video, and (hopefully) provide you with an error code if possible, that you might be able to Google to get more info..

good luck!

 

[Binky]

You can also try mediainfo if you need info about an existing file.

http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en

 

[ChuckR]

I couldn't get MediaInfo to run. I have added a pointer to the file created in GSpot on ImageShack. I couldn't get the jpg to get created large enough for this message.

http://img407.imageshack.us/i/bowlingn.jpg/