On Sun, 24 Aug 2008 12:05:21 -0700, "Jeff McKay"
<jeff.mckay@comaxis.com> wrote:
>I have moved to a new Vista machine from an old one. I have a bunch of .avi
>files that worked fine on my old machine, but on the new, they won't play,
>saying
>a codec is missing. I went through the procedure of searching for and
>downloading
>a new codec (supposedly for Divx) but the only improvement was to make the
>sound work. Where do I locate the correct codec?
The "word" CODEC is a acronym for a compressor decompressor. AVI,
another can be confusing since it often is just a wrapper and not a
true AVI file, having something else, (another file type) inside the
wrapper.
The first step is to see what CODEC is needed. A good, free tool that
will tell you (mainly for AVI files) is called G-Spot, one of several
CODEC information appliances. You open the file you can't play by
right clicking on it and saying open with G-Spot once you install it.
It will tell you what CODECS (if any) already on your system will play
the video stream and what will play the audio stream. If you don't see
any files on your system that will play at least you know the name of
the CODEC you need. As you can see a somewhat clumsy system.
If you're using Media Player (Vista's default video player) you
usually are much better off installing all or some of the following
players:
GOM Player
XnView
VLC Media Player
All the above aren't as fussy about CODECs, using their own internal
ones to play many files. If they can't GOM Player for example unlike
Media Player will find make a honest effort to find one on the web and
actually install it, again Media Player often can't or won't.
As long as the videos played in XP, you could use G-Spot on both to
compare the CODEC database on each system and find that way what's
different or missing on Vista. To do that open G-Spot, View -
installed codecs. It will generate a separate video and audio list of
all the codecs on your system