WMP not opening up automatically when doubleclicking avi file

[DualMonitors]

i purchased a new digital camera and made some avi files to test it. saved them to a file on my hard drive. when i double click an avi, Windows Media Player does NOT open up, yet, the sound of the avi starts, so obviously, something is "playing", but there is nothing on my monitor to show that, and there is not WMP interface displayed (no image of the avi is playing, ONLY the sound).

may i please ask how to resolve this?

thank you in advance!

 

[DualMonitors]

Bump for the night crew!

 

[xtknight]

Shift right click on the file and do open with. Choose Windows Media Player in the list that comes up. Does that help? Note: left-click the file first, then press shift and right click, because if you shift before you left-click the file, a whole bunch of files ahead of it will get selected.

 

[MatthewF01]

ive been working with 'dualmonitors' offline to help him resolve this... but what is the shift-click doing?
I see no difference between that and when I regularly right-click a file..

 

[DualMonitors]

Mr. stknight:

i tried it. i get exactly the same thing: the sound starts, no video, and no WMP interface visible. Obviously, something related to WMP is "playing", otherwise, I wouldn't be hearing the sound portion of my video.

any other ideas, please?

thanks!

 

[CheesePoofs]

Does it do the same thing with other avi clips? You could try uninstalling WMP and then reinstalling the newest version. Could just be that WMP is corrupt.

 

[MatthewF01]

Originally posted by: CheesePoofs
Does it do the same thing with other avi clips? You could try uninstalling WMP and then reinstalling the newest version. Could just be that WMP is corrupt.

i was actually just turning over the same idea...
Can it be removed, or does it root itself into Windows...

 

[DualMonitors]

wmp does not show up in Add/Remove Programs...so, MatthewF01 is correct: it has "rooted" itself into Windows.

any other suggestions, please?

this is odd as there's no reason why it should work properly. confused here.

thanks again.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: DualMonitors
wmp does not show up in Add/Remove Programs...so, MatthewF01 is correct: it has "rooted" itself into Windows.

any other suggestions, please?

this is odd as there's no reason why it should work properly. confused here.

thanks again.

Just download WMP10 setup and install over your current broken one. Chances are you don't have the latest build of it.

 

[DualMonitors]

xtknight:

i just checked, i have Version 10.00.00.3646.

does that mean i don't have to re-download and re-install?

this is an odd problem, right? ugh! very frustrating.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: DualMonitors
xtknight:

i just checked, i have Version 10.00.00.3646.

does that mean i don't have to re-download and re-install?

this is an odd problem, right? ugh! very frustrating.

that's not the latest build, so if you download WMP10 from Microsoft's site it should contain 3923, which I have, or later. Yes that's a VERY weird problem. Hey...I have an idea. Maybe the video is playing on your other monitor or something. You do use dual monitors, correct? Try enabling theater mode or something like that..make sure it's not displaying on your other monitor. Overlay mode fux0rs up on dual monitor setups sometimes. Heck, the WMP interface should still be showing though, but it's worth a try. Does the media play fine in another media player like mplayer2 (media player 6.4) or "media player classic" (by Gabest)? There is a (shareware ) program called XPLite that can remove Windows Media Player for you. God damned bastards want money for everything don't they...well you could find out how to display windows file protection (might be able to do it with a demo version of XPLite). Then you could delete the windows media player files and stuff but I REALLY don't recommend it unless you really know the ins and outs of Windows like the back of your hand. You might not be able to reinstall it if you screw up, but you probably can...I don't really know. Take my other suggestions before you ever attempt this though.

And how did you get that version number? Does WMP open fine if you open it from the start menu, just not when it's opened from the Windows Explorer shell?

I know how it feels. I have my own problems with WMP...stupid crap... it occasionally crashes my network/modem when it loads a video off the net, lol.

which leads me to a question I have if you don't mind: when you have dual monitors, could you set it up so just one monitor is displaying, but you can choose between the two outputs on your video card to switch monitors? What I plan to do is use a CRT for gaming and LCD for text and switch them accordingly. sorry for branching off-topic there...

Originally posted by: MatthewF01
ive been working with 'dualmonitors' offline to help him resolve this... but what is the shift-click doing?
I see no difference between that and when I regularly right-click a file..

It shows "Open with..." in Windows 9x. I forgot it's already shown on Windows XP.

 

[DualMonitors]

thanks for continuing to try to help.

i opened up WMP and under Help, i clicked About in order to get the version number. then, under Help, there's a selection to get new WMP updates. when i clicked that, it says that i have the latest version!!

now what? baffled!

i have dual monitors: 2 LCD's. one is via dvi and the other vga. both are always on. i've never tried to disable one. i'm not that sophisticated so i only know how to do things to the extent that i need to do what i'd like it to do

something's not right. i just don't know what and how to correct this current, odd, and aberrant WMP behavior!! Help! thx!

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: DualMonitors
thanks for continuing to try to help.

i opened up WMP and under Help, i clicked About in order to get the version number. then, under Help, there's a selection to get new WMP updates. when i clicked that, it says that i have the latest version!!

now what? baffled!

i have dual monitors: 2 LCD's. one is via dvi and the other vga. both are always on. i've never tried to disable one. i'm not that sophisticated so i only know how to do things to the extent that i need to do what i'd like it to do

something's not right. i just don't know what and how to correct this current, odd, and aberrant WMP behavior!! Help! thx!

try downloading this from Microsoft's Windows Media Player site: http://download.microsoft.com/download/...9-4F50-B95D-E45EF7013F87/MP10Setup.exe

It should reinstall Windows Media Player 10. That should correct the behavior. If that doesn't fix it, we could try looking at your Explorer shell associations. Better yet, just try this from start menu run.

wmplayer "C:\path to the video file"

Don't forget the quotes. It won't work otherwise.

 

[DualMonitors]

FYI: i have a dell computer, something like 2.2GHz, an Nvidia video card with 1 dvi and 1 vga output, a samsung 21.3" LCD connected to the vga output, and a dell 24" (16:10) LCD connected to the dvi output.

i tried to re-download WMP 10 from Microsoft, which was successful, but the situation is almost the same: that is, the sound comes on, NO WMP interface visible (no controls), but on my secondary LCD (the 21.3" Samsung), the avi starts to play in FULL screen mode (no controls of any sort visible). the only way to "get out" of this is to click the WMP icon near my start button at the bottom of the screen, and when WMP opens up, THEN, the avi starts OVER again from the beginning! Of course at this point, i then have the various controls (start/stop/fast forward...etc) available to me.

i have no idea what's going on! any help would be most appreciated.

thank you in advance!

Mr. xtknight: thanks for continuing to try to help me. i tried your suggestion... by the way, i don't understand your last suggestion of" wmplayer "C.\path to the video file" where do i type that? i am lost on that part. thanks!

 

[Pete]

Doesn't WMP have a button or tab that lets you choose what file types to associate with it? If so, can you ask it to redetect file types? Better yet, if you're not tied to using WMP, give MPlayerClassic (at Sourceforge.net) a try. You might forego WMP completely, as I have, in favor of MPC's (IMO) superior overlay controls. At the very least, I'd suggest installing MPC and telling it to associate with AVI files, then running WMP and telling it to retake AVI files. Maybe that'll clear things up.

You sure you have the right codec to play back these video files? I have no idea what's happening when you double-click the videos, but audio without video suggests a missing codec. I'd also suggest installing ffdshow (also from Sourceforge).

What digicam is it, and what does it's manual say? Maybe this is a job for Quicktime?

 

[xtknight]

OH, hey I just got another idea. Try right clicking your task bar, and going to toolbars to disable the Windows Media Player explorer bar. That might be doing it... Close all your programs on the taskbar, and then open Explorer and double-click your file. Now find an empty space on your task bar, right click it, goto Toolbars, and uncheck Windows Media Player.

For the wmplayer thing:

Goto start menu run and type:

wmplayer "c:\path to your media file"

like wmplayer "c:\documents and settings\user\My Documents\video file.avi"

 

[Mrvile]

Does this only happen while trying to play AVI's? Do you have the DivX Codec?

 

[DualMonitors]

i don't know where to find or what to do with "codecs". i do know that i double checked my DivX version and it is rather recent, something like 9 or something like that. you have to go through a bunch of menus to get to the window that tells you about the DivX version, it wasn't like one or two clicks.

how do i get a particular codec that's for my Casio EXZ-750 digital camera? i'm recording MPEG4 videos.

Mr. xtknight: i'm not following your suggestion about right clicking my task bar...etc. what does that do, please? the procedure sounds confusing to me...sorry...

 

[DualMonitors]

i went to sourceforge.net, but don't know where to find MPlayerClassic? i'm lost on that site, it has so many things. sorry for being such a newbie.

any help would be most appreciated.

thanks

 

[DualMonitors]

My camera is the Casio EXZ-750:

http://exilim.casio.com/index.cfm?fusea...d=b90395c1-4fa9-4be4-9d3f-51aaf90e09f5

the manual:

http://ftp.casio.co.jp/pub/world_manual/qv/en/EXZ750_e.pdf

Page 103 of the abovementioned pdf file is the section/page pertaining to their description of movies made by this camera: MPEG-4 AVI file format. isn't that ODD? is it MPEG-4 or AVI?

This is the FAQ of Casio that pertains specifically to the Casio EXZ-750's movie mode:

http://faq.casio.com/faq/exilim/faq_typ...T=EXILIM%20EX-Z750&CATEGORY=Movie#3649

they indicate that if the computer is connected to the internet, just playing the movie once would install the proper codec.

 

[DualMonitors]

bump for a fresh week...thx!

 

[imported_Pressure]

Start -> Run

Type "mplayer2" without the "

Open your file.

 

[Kogan]

I had some problems with my dv camcorder when I first copied a file from it to my computer. It probably uses a different codec that yours though, since for 60 minutes of video, I get a 16gigabyte un-compressed avi file.

Anyhow, I'm not sure what I did to be able to view the video properly. I downloaded some "decoder pack" that included lots of different codecs and installed them all. I also of course re-encoded the video as mpeg2 (for dvd) and the new compressed video was playable.

Also try opening it up in a different program. Like a different media player, or even Microsoft movie maker (moviemk.exe - I think comes with windows xp).

I figure it's most definetly a codec problem though - your computer thinks it has the codec it needs, but it's actually got the wrong one. Do a search for "decoder pack" and see what you get.

Edit:
Mpeg-4 is basically the same as divx and almost always ends in a .avi extension. Mpeg2 is the format dvds use and is closer to the .mpg format files that people are used to.

 

[DualMonitors]

Mr. Pressure: i do not have any mplayer yet! that's why my posting said that i cannot find it on that sourceforge.net site. i went to sourceforge.net and searched for MPlayerClassic and didn't get anything that was obviously correct. i think your suggestion of "Start/run..." assumes that i've already downloaded some version of MPlayer, right?

Does anyone know how to get MPlayer?

 

[imported_Pressure]

If you have Windows XP it should already be on your computer.