What FORMAT / CODEC to use for a video file?

[Superwormy]

A fricking friend just sent me a video file with no extension, I dont' know what Codec I need to watch the video, and MS Media Player can't download it. Is there any way I can find out waht format its encoded / decoded with so that I can go dl the appropriate Codec and watch it?

 

[murphy55d]

just get ffdshow and bsplayer and you should be able to play it no problem.

 

[Mrburns2007]

rename it .avi or .mpg or .mpeg and make sure you've loaded a codec pack or ffdshow

 

[notfred]

no extension implies macintosh implies quicktime.

 

[glugglug]

If you have cygwin or other GNU text utilities installed you can get the codec signature out of any AVI like this:

head -c 192 [filename] | tail -c 4

If the output of that looks like garbage its not an AVI, try renaming it to .mpg and seeing if that works, or try renaming to .mov and seeing if quicktime will play it.