Now that I have my new system installation completed (what a job - 15 hours), I need your advice on the Codec question. You scared me off the K-Lite, and you may have been right because I had all knids of nits and lice on the old system that I could not explain. But now I need a few codecs for the WMP. For starters .mpeg4 (that is how my Sony camera records) and .flv. I may need more, but I am not sure yet. For the time being I work with a conversion to .wmv, but that is not very handy. Please point me into the right direction.
How-To Geek Forums » Windows Vista
@ScottW
(9 posts)
whs, good plan -- after a clean install keep away from messy, bloated codec packs. Here are my recommendations:
MPEG-4 - use ffdshow-tryouts for MP4, h.264, 3GP, FLV, and other types of MPEG-4 video streams. XviD and DivX are also MPEG-4 streams. Most modern Quicktime videos use h.264 encoding.
I always recommend using the Codec Tweak Tool after modifying codecs and DirectShow filters. Set it to detect broken codecs and filters. You might also want to generate a text file and look it over. Even if you don't understand it all, you will probably learn something.
When you find a video that won't play correctly, use MediaInfo to find out the container, video stream, audio stream, and text stream types. Whichever of these you don't have support for, check at free-codecs.com for a handler or ask me. You might want to go through your collection of videos to make sure each distinct type plays. Remember the MPEG-1, MPEG-2 including DVD, and WMV are all built-in to Vista. AVI containers can hold a wide variety of streams, including MPEG-4, but Vista should handle most of them. If you have Real Media or older QuickTime videos, you will need the RealPlayer or QuickTime software or the "alternatives".
Thank you very much for this "total care package". I had retained the MediaInfo from one of your earlier answers but never had a need to use it yet. The Tweak Tool (also from one of your earlier recommendations) I had used a while ago and it had found a lot of broken Codecs (maybe 20 or so). But with my new install I want to try to follow your concept. I concluded, after reading the K-Lite documentation a little (and listening to your logic), that you might have a point (never too old to learn).
My requirements are actually pretty modest since I only do capture (.wmv) and my Camera (.mpeg4) plus an occasional little download like .mpg3 and .flv. So with the above I can certainly manage. Thanks again.
Btw: My bits from Newegg are supposed to arrive tomorrow (if I can trust the UPS tracking system). But now they have blocked off our road for 2 days because they are repaving it. I hope the UPS guy does not mind to walk a half a block. Would be ideal to do the box conversion the next 2 days because I am housebound anyhow. Right now I am formatting my new 640GB Hitachi external disk that will be dedicated to Ghost (after 4 hours running it is not even at 50% yet). At first I did not check the file format which was actually Fat32. Ghost wrote an image on it anyhow, but it looked funny with all the little files. So I decided to revamp it to NTFS and redo the image - no big deal.
Thank you for the thought. The package was delivered this morning - to the neighbor. I guess the guy was too lazy to make the few extra steps. But it is here and I can start playing mechanic. It will be like in the old days when I played with the erector kit - 60 years ago.
Just unpacked my "gift box". The SSD is really cute (the wife's comment). Amazing what they can pack into such a little box. It will be easy to install with the brackets. The Graphics card looks easy too. But the PSU is scary. I think one could wire the space shuttle with that. I'll approach it very, very carefully - tomorrow. Well, I did it to myself. Had to try this stuff out. Now I wish I had looked over the shoulders of my hardware peers when I was still in development. But it is never too late to learn new tricks.
@whs,
PSU tutorial.
Pinout diagrams on page 14.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/181/1
Best Regards,
Rick P.
Reply
You must log in to post.