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beaverboy

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Jan 7, 2002
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I'm using Win ME and I'm having trouble playing Avi video;Realplayer opens up but only the audio player so I just hear audio ,but see no video-MPG video is played just fine.Just A problem playing Avi.

Anyone run across this problem?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanx
 
You need to do two things:

1. Un-install real player (go to start-settings-control panel, add remove programs, select real player, click on remove). When you do have to re-install it, pay attention to each step, somewhere along the line it asks you if you want to associate avi file types with real player, select no so that they will continue to play in windows media player.

2. go to http://www.divx.com/ and download and install divx 5.02

This should fix your problem.
 
If I understand the question correctly..

You want to use RealPlayer to play AVI files. If this is the case the simplest way is to go to Control panel-Folder options--View files types. Find file type AVI and associate it with the realplayer executable.

EBS
 
Just because you associate the AVI file type with real player it doesn't mean RP will be able to play it. I could "associate" a text file with real player if I really wanted to.

The problem is either you don't have the proper codec for real player to play the video stream portion of the file or the person who encoded the file is a moron. Either way it may be very difficult to veiw the stream. If you don't know what codec it was encoded with it makes it very hard to find and therefore, playback.

LoveThem girls is on the right track though, you may want to try opening the file in various media programs until you (maybe) find one that will play it. DivX is a decent one to start with.
 
Avi files

Thank-you to Lovethemgirls(so do I!) Good Sam and Sasha.

I have solved the problem with your help.

With LTG help I was able to play Avi files with Windows Media Player,and with Good Sam's info I was able to change the media type so I can now play the Avi files with Real Player One.

Thanx again everyone much appreciated!
 
Thanks for the lecture Sasha...

It's common knowledge that Real Player can handle Avi files so the prerequesites are not necessary. We would assume that the original requestor for information was not as clueless as to attempt to play a text file with a media player. However, if you'd like to discuss Codec design, I'm all ears..:-)

EBS
 
Last edited:
Oh come on now EB I wasn't giving you a lecture, I was simply stating a fact.

I will admit I am not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination, just a measly techie.

Yes, real player can play 'most' AVI files. That is providing that the proper codec is included in real player itself. I am sure you know there are tons of different codecs for encodong AVI's, and it should be common knowledge to you that if real player does not include the specific codec that the file was encoded with it won't be able to play it back. That is why I suggested that he should try opening the file with other media programs and that simply changing the file association may not help, especially when your suggestion was to associate the avi's with real player and judging by beaverboy's post, they already were.

We would assume that the original requestor for information was not as clueless as to attempt to play a text file with a media player.
Click to expand...

I learned a long time ago, when it comes to people asking for help with computers, never assume!

And I was only using the text file as an example. It was sort of a joke, you know.... ha ha? ;)
 
I am clueless for many things (da where am I?).

I was trying to play an avi video file not a text file.

Anyway you guys helped solve the problem and that is the important thing.

Thanx again
BB
 
My apologies for the misunderstanding..

Sasha,

You and the advice about divx in this case are absolutely right. It would appear that the file in question was Divx encoded. I should have asked more questions rather than trying to give the guy what I thought was the most straightforward solution to the problem given an assumed set of circumstances. You are quite right also about there being a number of different codecs for AVI files, but most of them are natively supported by Microsoft. Only recently have we seen AVI highjacked by DIV 3 and DIV4 type files which do require additional codecs.

Since the guy was running windows ME, it is likely that he has been successfully viewing AVI files for a number of years. I just assumed that he was perplexed as to why something was not working under Real Player that had previously worked.

AVI is a Microsoft defacto standard for windows video (recently supplanted by ASF). Microsoft supports MPEG4 through type MP43 codec. Where the confusion starts is that the authors of Divx chose to use the avi file extension causing people to believe nothing was new under the sun. Well, Microsoft hasn't yet adopted Divx and this won't be shipping with any OS. The Divx people would have been much better off choosing a whole different file type to avoid the end user confusion. Older versions of Media player for windows would spit out an error message and tell you that a codec was missing. Now you get his reported symptom under windows, and get an obscure error under XP Player with no useful diagnostic information when you go to the suggested followup.

Something worth trying in the future..to find out what kind of codec is used to encode a file, open it under wordpad or any text editor. The first few lines of the file will display the codec type..for example div3, div4 or I263/H263 which are the original AVI codecs.

Peace..

EBS
 
EB, you are knowledgable, but in my job as a tech/network adminstrator I have learned to make things as simple as possible, users generally don't want to know the idealogy behind fixing a problem, they just want the problem fixed as quickly and as simply as possible. I knew that the .avi file association was created not by beaverboy but was very likely caused when he installed real player with the default settings, and that if you hear audio but no video it is always a codec issue. Updating divx usually works.

If you see my answer above, the problem was explained to bb and fixed in as few words as possible. I'm sure he didn't care about the reasoning, he just wanted a fix.
 
I believe I already acknowledged that your solution was right and beaverboy has acknowledged that the problem is fixed...Is there something else missing here, or did you just feel the need for further comment directly to me?

EBS
 
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