help with file

awacko

I have film stored on my hard drive. I want to watch it on my computer
to check that its okay before I burn it onto DVD, but when I use Windows Media I can only hear the sound - how do I see the pictures as well (I have windows vista basic) ?????

Thanks

BexTech

Sounds like you are missing a required codec, I'm guessing this film is in an AVI file.

If you Download and use Gspot: http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

This will tell you which audio and video codecs the file is using, as the audio is working, then you have the required codec for audio already, being an AVI it has a good chance it's using the MP3 (MPEG I/II Layer 3) codec.

Once you find which video codec it requires then it's a case of downloading the correct codec, though being an AVI it's a good chance it could be either DivX or XVid .

An AVI file is simply the container file, so the audio and video codecs could be one of many.

M3_Sussex

If you download and install the following K-Lite codec pack, this will give you the common codecs required and should fix your problem.

awacko

Thanks for this. I can see play the film on my computer. I burnt it onto a blank DVD which was a 16xDVD+R, so when I burnt it on I selected 16x (don't really understand what this means) and it works great on my PC , but it won't play on any of my DVD players (I have played DVD's with DVD+R on them before so I don't think its that). The file has .avi at the end if this means anything to anybody. Any suggestions as to what I am doing wrong ??

BexTech

16x is the speed the burner writes to the disc, 16 times the normal single playback speed.

Higher the speed the less time it take to burn a disc.

Unless you have a DVD Player that plays AVIs, then you are going to have to convert the AVI to DVD-Video.

At the moment you are simply copying the file as is to the DVD, so nothing is altered and requires a PC or a DVD Player that will play AVIs.

Though these players that do play AVIs only usually play MPEG4, DivX, XViD, MPEG1 or MPEG2 encoded AVIs.

An AVI is simply a container file, so the video inside could be one of many codecs, same with the audio.

Lidl have sold excellent DivX DVD players in the past for £20 and later £30.

If you only have a standard DVD player, then it's time to get transcoding. Convert from whatever format the AVI is in to MPEG2 DVD compliant DVD-Video.

There are many programs around that will do this, I use TMPGEnc Xpress, but there is also WinAvi Converter, ConvertXtoDVD , AVI to DVD Converter, DVD Santa and more. Nero Vision is one many people use also.

http://www.videohelp.com/tools?convert=AVI%20to%20DVD has a list of a few programs.

Some programs will burn the resulting files to DVD for you, others will require a program like Nero and selecting DVD-Video mode.

Donnie

Oh dear.... You'll need to convert it. Something like Nero Vision 4 will do the trick. It's part of Nero 7.
Download Nero 7 from; http://www.nero.com/enu/Downloads.html

Cricri

Use AviCodec to determine which format the video is, or rather, which codec is needed to decode the video. Once you know that, you know which codec to install to read the video.
If you do not wish to install codecs, you could use a video player that has built in codes, such as VLC:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

And if you want to read it on a DVD player and not on the PC, then unless this player supports this codec, you'll need to convert the video. If it's DivX ort XviD, I'd recommend Nero Vision, which is free if you already have a Nero Burning ROM license:
http://www.nero.com/nero7/eng/Nero_Vision_4.html