Does anyone know how to extract and play .avi and .wmv movie files on Media Player?
Thanks,
zuki

Hello Zuki,
This is a tough one to answer completely.
The reason is because normally all you do is click on the media clip and that is that. It plays automatically.

This is assuming that your Window Media Player is updated and is being use as
the defalut player.

Now having said that here is the fly in the ointment. (You knew this was coming.)

Although Windows Media Player claims to be able to handle .avi and a whole host of other formats there is a problem.

An AVI file is called a container format. It will hold audio and video. But software engineers have developed a way to compress the audio and video inside the AVI file making it even smaller to download. This new "codec" (that's not a typo for code, that is it's given name) will not play in the Windows Media Player. Unless it is converted or decompressed by an add on program or unless the most updated Window Media Player is in use. Sometimes this won't work either. I know, sounds impossible and without getting to technical the set up and version of your operating system comes into play about here.

Now, since I have said all that you will hear of some people not having any problems what so ever. (Not all AVI files have been given the treatment.)

You also said there was trouble with the WMV format as well. This would make me think that you may not be using the lastest Window Media Player.

I know this wasn't much help but give me an "E" for effort.

Floyd



[This message has been edited by ByRequest (edited 12-30-2004).]

Floyd,
Thanks for the effort Geesh, I've tried everything, including loading software that claim to indentify and compress all formats. I even downloaded the latest windows media (same claim) with no success. Hopefully, I won't have to mess with codec/conversion, 'cause it's getting way too deep and time consuming at this point.
Regards,
zuki

The windows mediaplayer will play the avi file "IF" your graphic card supports the codec.
If not you need the work around, so first look for driver upgrades for your graphic card and make sure you installed all codec's

Fred

"The windows mediaplayer will play the avi file "IF" your graphic card supports the codec."

News to me! I always thought the idea of Windows was that the specific hardware of the graphics card was hidden behing the drivers for the card, and that the drivers should all support common functionality. If the graphics card does not provide hardware support for a specific feature then the drivers should emulate that in software; the issue becomes one of performance.

Without hardware support some types of encoded video will play back so slowly as to be useless.

I've got a pretty crummy graphics card yet all my video playback problems have so far been traceable to the lack of a suitable codec. If I can get a codec then I'm OK.

I would expect ".wmv" files to play back without problems. Certainly ".avi" files are much more problematic. Windows Media Player has an option you can set so that it tries to automatically download codecs for unknown file formats; I can't say I found this to be very successful, however.