Hi There,
Yes its all a bit strange. When I had my problems in this area it was only
with Movie Maker. The two other packages I had worked fine. But even that
can be explained.
It seems that MM does not dictate the name of the codecs it should use
whereas both of my other packages do..well almost...The Newsoft program
gives no options at all with regard to which codec to use, and although I
no longer have it on the system, I am fairly sure that the codecs (actually
DLL's) were in the same directory as the main program and they were not
available to other programs. The other package, AIST MovieDV 6, has its own
set of codecs...and they are very fast (The software is actually used by a
lot of TV and Film companies) You can override the options in MovieDV to
use other codecs (This is the correct way of doing things by the way..It is
really not a good idea interfering with the windows setup by renaming the
files that are codecs...if that was a good way of doing things then it
would demonstrate that no other program needed that codec, in which case it
would be more appropriate to delete it and the program that once used it.
Can you imagine...a class action against you for causing failure of a
program be recommending that you rename some of its component parts Phew!!)
There are a list of codecs with comments about their effects on MM2 on
www.papajohn.org under Problem Solving, Acceleration and codecs. The bit
you need to look at is the lower half of the page. It list known codecs
that causes problems.It would be foolish to say the list is complete, but
it is probably the best there is.
If I am not teaching you how to do something you already know...
1) Grab the list and print it out
2) Open the codecs section by clicking Start > Settings > Control Panel >
System > Hardware > Device Manager > Sound, Video and Game Controllers.
3) Compare the Audio and Video codecs that are listed under each of those
headings with the list you printed out from the web and take action as you
alone see fit.
4) By double clicking on any of the codecs you will get to see its
properties. You should take note that not all audio and video codecs have
properties that are displayable or indeed editable.
5) You will also notice that you can alter the order of the codecs so that
XP looks at them in the order that you want.
PLEASE NOTE
===========
I strongly disagree with searching out any file on a computer and renaming
it so as to make another program work, its just asking for trouble later
on. You will see from items 4 and 5 above that you can Add, Delete and
Modify some or all of the codecs that are stored in universal locations on
your system. If a codec is not registered on your system but actually
exists in a directory other than those on the search path, then that codec
will almost certainly not be part of the problem and is almost certainly
accessed by a particular program (as in my case with MovieDV)
I would recommend that you note down the current order of your codecs and
then experiment by altering the order they are presented to any program
that you are using. I would suggest that you leave the audio codecs until a
last resort situation (Yes they can cause situations such that video will
not be displayed)
If you venture into the area of changing a codecs parameters please write
down the current settings before changing anything..I have made this
mistake and after you have altered a few of them its very easy to get
confused with what the current codec should be set at by default.
If you are certain that a particular codec is the one causing the problem,
look again at its properties so as to try and determine which program it
came with, they are not always named so that you can work that out, but by
eliminating other codecs and with a knowledge of what programs are on your
system you can sometimes make a good guess. In addition, altering where
possible a codecs properties would be my first choice rather than removing
it. Also, if you cannot work out which program it came with by the above
method then find the actual program using Windows Explorer and right click
the codec and look under properties...sometimes a codec will contain
internally information on the original company, the software it is
associated with and of course things like version number.
If none of the above works, I currently have a good line in large, heavy
hammers
