Attempting a movie

[Raven369]

I am attempting to play Bowling for Columbine but it says I need some special codecs which I thought I have. Any help is appreciated. I tried installing the Xvid but can't figure it out.

[Raven369]

Ok I got video but no audio.

[The Edge]

Hey.
Gspot is telling you your gonna need XviD.
Get that here.
If you believe you have already done this, try FFDshow instead.
Make sure you tick Xvid during the install.
It says you ok with AC3 but you could try this decoder.
Good Luck.

Edge

[digitaldick]

More about that.....

Hey Edge- I installed the xvid codec a while back to view a movie with a somewhat similiar GSpot analysis to the one posted here by Raven369. The link you provided shows the "latest" binary as Xvid-04102002-1.exe. Will clicking on this result in the download of another, newer version of the same xvid codec so I will have 2 versions of the same codec installed, or will one install over the other? A search for "xvid" finds that I show xvid.dll (428Kb) and xvid.ax (284Kb) both present in C:\Windows\System but neither file has a version identity. Thanks for any thoughts on this.

[The Edge]

Yeap. you can only have the one XviD codec installed. Same as most other codecs. The link I supplied is to to Koepi's builds which I personally use. There are loads of other builds like Nic's and UManic's builds.
If you want to find out what build you have, open VDub and goto Video\Compression\XviD and the about box.
If your installing Xvid make sure you uninstall any previous builds and then load defaults on the newly installed one.
Good Luck.

Edge

[digitaldick]

more about that xvid thingy....

Edge- thanks for that help. The VDub about shows me this: XviD MPEG video codec 10:43:33 Jun 28 2002 Core Version 2.1. How could I learn if a "build" that is offered, for example the Koepi build that you referenced, is older or newer than the build that I have already installed before I download it, or doesn't it matter? I guess what I really want to know is- will a movie play with 1 build and not another if the xvid codec is necessary?

[The Edge]

VDub is just reporting the core cvs that that build was complied from. Koepi's usual have a bit more info in the about box. If the movie is encoded using a "stable" build, then really any other stable build will play it fine. That's the reason it's stable. The devleopment of Xvid is ongoing and there are changes on a near weekly, even daily basis. If I encode something today with a dev build it might not play on tomorrows build correctly. The stable builds, for example, do not have b-frame support.
This will soon be changing as I can see an official XviD RC-1 very soon indeed.
Basicly, if your into testing all these new fancy features of XviD then get the dev release but for pure playback, use stable or ffdshow for the moment.

Edge

[digitaldick]

more about that.....

Thanks, Edge, for that information about the XviD codec. But my question about whether or not it makes any difference in playback of a movie remains. I guess the only way to know for certain is to install them all, one build at a time, uninstalling the previous one before installing the next, and then try to play the movie after each install. Right now, WMP and GSpot agree that "no combination of filters could be found to render the stream"! This error from WMP could mean practically anything but since my WMP has played XviD encoded movies previously w/o difficulty, I'm thinking that maybe a certain filter was used this time during the process that was not used the last time.

edited -3-3-03- attachment did not upload properly. A re-review of the GSpot indicates that it's not the xvid codec that is the playback problem, it is the ac3 audio codec. Sorry for the confusion.