A
Adam Albright
I thought maybe I should relax a little instead of fighting with Vista
for hours and hours. So this morning I was reviewing my extensive
video collection which includes some funny web vids, some people sent
me or I found, some I made over the years. All contain both video and
audio tracks. These files span just about every audio/video file type
there is.
Well it was going ok viewing them in Vista's new Media player. Till I
hit one file. It started to load then popped up a warning box and
asked if I wanted to download a audio codec. I say yes. It goes out on
the web, comes back, seems to load the codec it claimed it needed or
does a decent job of faking it. In typical Microsoft fashion Media
Player starts to play the video, but oops, the video portion plays ok,
but still no audio.
What Vista attempted to install was the Windows Media Audio Codec.
Just to help Vista out, I reboot to be sure the "new" codec gets
properly installed and registered. Naturally that didn't make a bit of
difference. Dumb Vista repeats the same steps, again goes out on the
web and again asks if I want it to "find" a codec it claims it needs,
so IT (Media Player) can play the file then again fails to play the
audio portion.
I guess this is a improvement since in earlier versions of Media
Player it often would nag it didn't understand the file format and
just died or took you to some useless web page. The kicker of course
is there isn't anything wrong with this file. It plays fine including
the audio, in every other player I have and I have many.
So being in a playful mood I check further. Considering working with
and creating videos is what I do, I know a lot of about what's needed
and what can go wrong. So I use a simple and FREE little tool called
GSpot to open the video file that won't play correctly in Media Player
11.
The purpose of GSpot is to tell you specifics of files you want to
play, WHAT codec was used to compress the file, what's needed to
uncompress, the file format, if there is file corruption, etc..
It turns out the file in question is a DivX 5 file. Very common. Media
Player can't handle it. But wait... that's BS. GSPot is of course way
smarter then Media Player because it can do what Media Player is
apparently too stupid to do, namely scan my system and show which
codecs if any can play this file. It says I have three such codecs;
Windows Media Audio
Windows Media Audio Decoder
WM Audio Decoder DMO
GSpot also says that DirectShow finds a codec and also should be able
to play it.
Are you understanding yet?
THIS IS HOW DUMB WINDOWS REALLY IS!
If you click on the names of the codecs shown above in GSpot it is
smart enough to give details about the drivers. Guess who has the
copyright on all three? That's right, Microsoft.
GSpot also lists the actual driver files, for example msaud32.acm for
Windows Media Audio. And it is sitting where it belongs in the Windows
folder in the sub folder:system32.
So the bottom line is Vista is so dumb, it tells its Media Player to
go out to the web and download a copy of a driver it already had in
its system32 folder but regardless it can't play it's audio, yet every
other player on my system has no problem playing the file correctly.
Now I'm sure these bug reports will bunch up the shorts of some MVP's
here because I keep proving that Vista is buggy and they keep trying
to blame hardware vendors or other software developers while in fact
many the problems are with Windows itself...like it always has been.
The truth seems to be Vista is a hog with a new silk dress. It may
look prettier but underneath its still the old pig Windows always was
in so many ways.
for hours and hours. So this morning I was reviewing my extensive
video collection which includes some funny web vids, some people sent
me or I found, some I made over the years. All contain both video and
audio tracks. These files span just about every audio/video file type
there is.
Well it was going ok viewing them in Vista's new Media player. Till I
hit one file. It started to load then popped up a warning box and
asked if I wanted to download a audio codec. I say yes. It goes out on
the web, comes back, seems to load the codec it claimed it needed or
does a decent job of faking it. In typical Microsoft fashion Media
Player starts to play the video, but oops, the video portion plays ok,
but still no audio.
What Vista attempted to install was the Windows Media Audio Codec.
Just to help Vista out, I reboot to be sure the "new" codec gets
properly installed and registered. Naturally that didn't make a bit of
difference. Dumb Vista repeats the same steps, again goes out on the
web and again asks if I want it to "find" a codec it claims it needs,
so IT (Media Player) can play the file then again fails to play the
audio portion.
I guess this is a improvement since in earlier versions of Media
Player it often would nag it didn't understand the file format and
just died or took you to some useless web page. The kicker of course
is there isn't anything wrong with this file. It plays fine including
the audio, in every other player I have and I have many.
So being in a playful mood I check further. Considering working with
and creating videos is what I do, I know a lot of about what's needed
and what can go wrong. So I use a simple and FREE little tool called
GSpot to open the video file that won't play correctly in Media Player
11.
The purpose of GSpot is to tell you specifics of files you want to
play, WHAT codec was used to compress the file, what's needed to
uncompress, the file format, if there is file corruption, etc..
It turns out the file in question is a DivX 5 file. Very common. Media
Player can't handle it. But wait... that's BS. GSPot is of course way
smarter then Media Player because it can do what Media Player is
apparently too stupid to do, namely scan my system and show which
codecs if any can play this file. It says I have three such codecs;
Windows Media Audio
Windows Media Audio Decoder
WM Audio Decoder DMO
GSpot also says that DirectShow finds a codec and also should be able
to play it.
Are you understanding yet?
THIS IS HOW DUMB WINDOWS REALLY IS!
If you click on the names of the codecs shown above in GSpot it is
smart enough to give details about the drivers. Guess who has the
copyright on all three? That's right, Microsoft.
GSpot also lists the actual driver files, for example msaud32.acm for
Windows Media Audio. And it is sitting where it belongs in the Windows
folder in the sub folder:system32.
So the bottom line is Vista is so dumb, it tells its Media Player to
go out to the web and download a copy of a driver it already had in
its system32 folder but regardless it can't play it's audio, yet every
other player on my system has no problem playing the file correctly.
Now I'm sure these bug reports will bunch up the shorts of some MVP's
here because I keep proving that Vista is buggy and they keep trying
to blame hardware vendors or other software developers while in fact
many the problems are with Windows itself...like it always has been.
The truth seems to be Vista is a hog with a new silk dress. It may
look prettier but underneath its still the old pig Windows always was
in so many ways.
