Other Media Player?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Joe
  • Start date Start date
J

Joe

Since this a general video group for XP, what is the best all-around
alternative media player? I have many videos that WMP will not play
(neither v8, or 9..). I'd like to try some other media players. What's
the best of the lot?

TIA
 
It's nearly ALWAYS a codec issue:

Download and install G-Spot from
http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

Once you analyze the AVI file, it will tell you with which codec it was
compressed. An uncompressed AVI file is over 12gb per hour, (yes, GB not
mb) so it is highly unlikely you have an uncompressed AVI file. A
compressed AVI file needs to have the correct codec installed on your PC
BEFORE it will play correctly.

The two most common codecs are DiVX and XVid.
 
Awesome, thanks! Since we're on the subject of getting WMP to work, I
thought it was supposed to download the missing codec automatically? I
realize that doesn't apply to DiVX, since it's a non-MS-endorsed hack.
But I highly doubt that *all* my non-playables are DiVX. Some of them
are .mpg, some are .avi, ...
 
Joe said:
Awesome, thanks! Since we're on the subject of getting WMP to work, I
thought it was supposed to download the missing codec automatically? I
realize that doesn't apply to DiVX, since it's a non-MS-endorsed hack.
But I highly doubt that *all* my non-playables are DiVX. Some of them
are .mpg, some are .avi, ...
Click to expand...

By installing the ffdshow codec http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow/ in
addition to what ever MS-approved codecs I've acquired, I can play virtually
every .avi file I've come across.

Strangely though, I have met up with just a couple of avi files and one mpeg
which WMP couldn't deal with. All three of these would play properly with
BSPlayer: http://www.bsplayer.org/ In the case of the mpeg movie, BSPlayer
allowed me to fast-forward where WMP would not. WMP refused to open the two
avi files in question, but BSPlayer played them fine.

Still, WMP plays virtually every avi with no problem at all following the
ffdshow install.

Regards,
Ian.
 
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