Video CODEC's

[patlucas]

Guys

I have a video file that I cannot watch because I am missing the proper CODEC. How can I find-out what CODEC I need? Any ideas where I can find those CODEC's?

Many thanks for your help

Patrick

[Whyzman]

How has the file been saved? If you right-click on the file and slide down to properties it should give you the file extension...

[patlucas]

This is true but sometimes the file extension isn't enough. AVI will only tell you that the file is Audio-Video Interleave which means that the audio and video parts of the movie and mixed together in a way that virtually any player knows about. However, once the player has seperated the audio data from the video data, it needs the services of the proper CODEC to make sense of this data. My question is: is there any way of knowing which CODEC was used to encode a movie file? There must be because players can tell and only play the file if they can find the correct CODEC either installed on the computer or on the internet. Problem is that video players do not always find the proper CODEC when they look for it.

[Whyzman]

What is the file extension?

[pave_spectre]

Try GSpot (http://www.headbands.com/gspot/). This will identify the audio/video codecs required for some files including avi and ogg.

Once you identify the required codec, link nixed is a list and links to find most of them.

Fopr avi and ogg files the most common codecs I would expect are DivX and XviD.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Pave, I started copying your post and in doing so:
G Spot went ok but that pc support DK? site didn't. Nod 32 immediately 'popped' up a warning on a 'trojan'. TroDown.A

Aye?

[pave_spectre]

Ok Fruss, I've killed that second link till I can have a better look, thanks.