Complicated boring question on codecs
Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 3:37 am
At least I think that's the problem. In summary, on my old machine XnView used to show movies when I positioned the cursor on the file name: on my new machine it shows the tool bar and sound but no picture. Same o/s (Win 2K), same version of XnView (1.91.4). I re-installed the program. Identical options. Program files directories have identical content. Normally I use VLC Media Player to watch movies (which solves the MP4 problem referred to in another posting) but it would be nice to have the integrated view as well. Where do I start looking?
Some suggestions. On my old machine prior to getting VLC, I had OEM programs for many of the common formats such as avi, mpg, wav-- programs such as DIVX, Windows Media Player, Real Player -- and presumably they came with codecs. (My understanding is that codecs are like drivers -- you need one for each different device -- but that VLC puts them all in the same "box".) Maybe XnView looks around and uses the OEM supplied codecs. Why can't it find the VLC ones? Is there a way of telling XnView to use them? One other thing: on the old machine all the files (including XnView and those OEM programs and VLC) were on the C: drive. In accordance with supposedly best practice, the only thing on C: on the new machine is the O/S; XnView, VLC etc are on D: If the absence of the OEM programs is the problem I'd like to avoid the tediousness of installing all those other waste-of-time OEMs. Is there such a thing as an "all the codecs" file that XnView can recognize? Alternatively is there a method of pulling the codecs out of the OEM directories? Or am I totally barking up the wrong tree here?
Some suggestions. On my old machine prior to getting VLC, I had OEM programs for many of the common formats such as avi, mpg, wav-- programs such as DIVX, Windows Media Player, Real Player -- and presumably they came with codecs. (My understanding is that codecs are like drivers -- you need one for each different device -- but that VLC puts them all in the same "box".) Maybe XnView looks around and uses the OEM supplied codecs. Why can't it find the VLC ones? Is there a way of telling XnView to use them? One other thing: on the old machine all the files (including XnView and those OEM programs and VLC) were on the C: drive. In accordance with supposedly best practice, the only thing on C: on the new machine is the O/S; XnView, VLC etc are on D: If the absence of the OEM programs is the problem I'd like to avoid the tediousness of installing all those other waste-of-time OEMs. Is there such a thing as an "all the codecs" file that XnView can recognize? Alternatively is there a method of pulling the codecs out of the OEM directories? Or am I totally barking up the wrong tree here?