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Re: [LUG] Windows FAIL

 


Sent from my iPhone

On 29 Sep 2011, at 09:23, Simon Robert -Cottage 
<simon.robert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> The media player VLC comes with support for pretty much very codec known to 
> humanity (well the linux version anyhow). So you could try the windows version, 
> you maybe be prompted for codec downloads if they're not included. It's also good 
> on subtitles as you can choose which file to open and don't need to muck about 
> re-naming and moving the sub file to the same directory...
> 
> Simon
> 
> On 26/09/11 19:49, Rob Beard wrote:
>> On 26/09/11 19:23, paul sutton wrote:
>>> On 26/09/11 19:16, Rob Beard wrote:
>>>> On 26/09/11 18:19, paul sutton wrote:
>>>>> HI
>>>>> 
>>>>> having just copied a few episodes of "star trek new voyages" to a dvd, I
>>>>> tried to have a go at playing back the video (avi)  windows media player
>>>>> opens and decides by some weird logic to play it as an audio file
>>>>> complete with the effects, giving up i switched over to Linux and played
>>>>> the file on the portable hdd, through movie player and it works.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Upon loading in to media player on Windows it seemed to suggest it was
>>>>> going to download the required files to play it, lol
>>>>> 
>>>>> anyway season 4 episodes 1,2, and 4 - 6 (i am working on ep 3) are now
>>>>> on dvd. :)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Why is it windows does stupid things.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Paul
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> It's not doing stupid things, it just didn't have the codecs
>>>> installed.  Was it Windows XP by any chance?
>>> 
>>> yeah,  just using it to play games.
>>>> 
>>>> I'm guessing that you're maybe running Linux Mint (which has non-free
>>>> codecs pre-installed) or Ubuntu and you're running it through mplayer
>>>> or you've either installed the gstreamer codecs or w32codecs from
>>>> Medibuntu?
>>> 
>>> Ubuntu
>>>> 
>>>> IIRC Windows XP will play WAV audio, MP3 audio, MPEG 1 video and
>>>> WMV/WMA format files out of the box, and if you install a newer
>>>> version of Media Player it'll also play MPEG2 video and DVD video, but
>>>> if you want XVID/DIVX/MP4 format video, or OGG, FLAC etc audio then
>>>> you have to install a codec.  Personally I'd recommend the Combined
>>>> Community Codec Pack.
>>> 
>>> Just avi file.
>> 
>> AVI is the container (basically the file that wraps up the video and audio, and 
>> optionally subtitle content in a snuggly warm blanket). Other containers could be 
>> MKV or OGG :-)
>> 
>> It sounds like Windows Media player looked at the file and worked out from the 
>> stream IDs that it was maybe a DIVX or XVID format video and MP3 audio track.  It 
>> could play the MP3 audio as it understands how to decode it (thanks to the codec 
>> which is included with Windows), but it sounds like it wasn't able to decode the 
>> video stream (okay it is a bit annoying that Microsoft don't make it available).
>> 
>> The same would happen on Linux if it didn't have the codecs installed (although 
>> on some distros it could well prompt to install the codecs if available).  Not 
>> sure about Macs, I'd hazard a guess that at least newer versions of OSX would 
>> have a basic few codecs built in, possibly in iTunes.
>> 
>> 
>>>> 
>>>> IIRC XVID and DIVX codecs came out after Windows XP (thinking back,
>>>> I'm sure the early versions of DIVX were hacks of the Windows Media
>>>> codecs) and in the early days if you wanted to play DVDs you needed a
>>>> DVD player application (or hardware decoder).
>>>> 
>>>> You'll find Vista and Windows 7 have better support out of the box.
>>> Well they are newer,  Windows and office are for people who have too
>>> much money and can afford it.
>> 
>> Not necessarily, quite a few people buy PCs with Windows pre-installed, some with 
>> Office pre-installed (although I really don't like what Microsoft were peddling, 
>> a cut down version of Office that only worked so many times), now it seems to 
>> have an ad-supported version of Office included.  I always recommend LibreOffice 
>> or OpenOffice over MS Office.  I do also recommend Linux but some people just 
>> aren't interested in switching, seems to be about 75% stick with Windows and 25% 
>> give Linux a try, I can convince them more if they have a really old PC, such as 
>> a friend of mine I am sorting a laptop out for (P3 700 with 384MB Ram and an 8GB 
>> hard drive).
>> 
>> Some people also take advantage of things like the educational discounts on 
>> Windows and (Office 2010 Pro full version for about 38 quid and Windows 7 Pro 
>> upgrade for about 39 quid).
>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Oh, and try playing the videos on a freshly installed Debian or Fedora
>>>> system, I'm sure you'll find similar issues...
>>>> 
>>>> http://tinyurl.com/6hj7qj9
>>>> http://wiki.debian.org/MultimediaCodecs
>>>> 
>>>> Don't get me wrong, I'm not standing up for Windows, but I'd hardly
>>>> call it a Windows fail.
>>> 
>>> Ok
>> 
>> :-)
>> 
>> Rob
>> ITunes plays most codecs on my mac, but when it doesn't I use VLC for mac, it 
>> plays everything. 

Clare

> 
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