Surely I'm possessed??

[intrigued]

First, I would like to say that I am very grateful for THIS forum, I certainly seem to need it alot.

Now, maybe I am just caught in the grips of a series of blonde moments, but someone sent me a link to a few movies (avi's) and they opened in temporary folders. But heres the deal...I have Real Player, and the little box pops up, it starts playing, but there is no picture, just this smaller box within the box and its blue static. Not only that, but theres sound, EVEN THOUGH I turned my speakers off because my children are sleeping, and I didn't want to awaken them with moaning and groaning! Why on earth do I have sound with my speakers off?? And since these are movies, not wavs, shouldn't there be a pic? My Real Player works fine, I assure you.....

This may be a bit more of a vent than I intended and less a question, but I am completely lost here. My speakers are not on! Plus, I want the movies... Help???

 

[Weird Harold]

Now, maybe I am just caught in the grips of a series of blonde moments, but someone sent me a link to a few movies (avi's) and they opened in temporary folders. But heres the deal...I have Real Player, and the little box pops up, it starts playing, but there is no picture, just this smaller box within the box and its blue static.
...
Why on earth do I have sound with my speakers off?? And since these are movies, not wavs, shouldn't there be a pic?

First, the sound problem:

The mute button onthe volume control only mutes sounds played through the"mixer." It may be that Realplayer is directly accessing your sound card instead of sending the sound through the mixer. There is a volume slider and mute button in Realplayer that doesn't affect Windows Volume control, so I strongly suspect that Realplayer does bypass Windows' volume control and mixer.

Now, the movie problem.

.AVI files use a different way of encoding the picture and sound than .RM files (RealPlayer's native format) do. You might try opening Windows Media Player and opening the AVI files from the file menu there, although I suspect you may need and updated "CODEC" to handle Video clips in AVI format.

AVI format is a Windows "video clip" format, and here are a couple of sample AVI files on the Windows 98SE disk -- I'd guess that all versions of windows include sample AVI files for testing the WMP installation.

If your system can play other AVI files properly, then the ones you're trying to play are probably corrupted and unwatchable. I'd still try WMP and any other movie player you have before giving up.

 

[intrigued]

Re: Re: Surely I'm possessed??

First, the sound problem:

The mute button onthe volume control only mutes sounds played through the"mixer." It may be that Realplayer is directly accessing your sound card instead of sending the sound through the mixer. There is a volume slider and mute button in Realplayer that doesn't affect Windows Volume control, so I strongly suspect that Realplayer does bypass Windows' volume control and mixer.

Now, the movie problem.

.AVI files use a different way of encoding the picture and sound than .RM files (RealPlayer's native format) do. You might try opening Windows Media Player and opening the AVI files from the file menu there, although I suspect you may need and updated "CODEC" to handle Video clips in AVI format.

AVI format is a Windows "video clip" format, and here are a couple of sample AVI files on the Windows 98SE disk -- I'd guess that all versions of windows include sample AVI files for testing the WMP installation.

If your system can play other AVI files properly, then the ones you're trying to play are probably corrupted and unwatchable. I'd still try WMP and any other movie player you have before giving up.

My goodness! What an informative reply, and I thank you. Now, if only I can make heads or tails of it!

I do believe I am following on the sound issue, but I am confused about the windows issue. I thought you could only have one or the other, I didn't realize you could use both Real Player and Windows Media Player?
I do know that the movies are watchable, thats why they were sent to me...a friend sent them.

Thank you very much, and I will try my best to decipher the parts of this that escape me at the moment.

 

[Weird Harold]

Re: Re: Re: Surely I'm possessed??

I thought you could only have one or the other, I didn't realize you could use both Real Player and Windows Media Player?
I do know that the movies are watchable, thats why they were sent to me...a friend sent them.

While you can only set one program as the default program for a file type, you can open a file type with any compatible program by opening the program first and then using the open command on the file menu to find and open the files.

The default player is the one that opens when you double-click on a file, but setting a default file association doesn't disable all of the other programs that can access the file.

All you can say for sure, is that the files are watchable on your firend's computer -- they may have become corrupted in the transfer from his system to yours or when you saved them to disk.

Your problem sounds more like Realplayer doesn't recognise the way the files are compressed more than the files being corrupted, but it is still a possibility.

 

[intrigued]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Surely I'm possessed??

While you can only set one program as the default program for a file type, you can open a file type with any compatible program by opening the program first and then using the open command on the file menu to find and open the files.

The default player is the one that opens when you double-click on a file, but setting a default file association doesn't disable all of the other programs that can access the file.

All you can say for sure, is that the files are watchable on your firend's computer -- they may have become corrupted in the transfer from his system to yours or when you saved them to disk.

Your problem sounds more like Realplayer doesn't recognise the way the files are compressed more than the files being corrupted, but it is still a possibility.

I'll tell you what..if it will help, may I send you the link? See the problem is, the site is in Dutch, and I'm having a bit of trouble making sense of anything other than the lovely visuals. Let me know, and I thank you.

 

[intrigued]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Surely I'm possessed??

I'll tell you what..if it will help, may I send you the link? See the problem is, the site is in Dutch, and I'm having a bit of trouble making sense of anything other than the lovely visuals. Let me know, and I thank you.

Never mind, I need to go for a bit. I'll just post it here, and if anyone has any luck with it, please let me know by posting. Thanks!

http://www.gplek.nl/html/nl/Filmpjes.htm

 

[Weird Harold]

Aha!, problem solved

http://www.gplek.nl/html/nl/Filmpjes.htm

The site says:
Om de filmpjes te kunnen afspelen heb je de DivX codec nodig.
Die kan je hier downloaden. Kies de "free version". Je hoeft verder niks in te vullen. Even wachten op het downloaden. Het installeren is simpel. Succes.

Which roughly translates to these movies require the "DivX Codec" to be viewed. You can download a free version of it here.

If you follow the link to http://www.divx.com/divx youcan download a 3.0 Mb free version of the program/codec you need to decode the video portion of the movies.

I'm downloading it now, and will let you know just what is involved in installing and using it.

 

[Weird Harold]

Re: Aha!, problem solved

I'm downloading it now, and will let you know just what is involved in installing and using it.

OK, dowloading and installing "DivX bundle 5.0.2" is pretty straight forward. If you just keep clicking "next" it installs "DivX Codec" and "Divx Player 2.0 Alpha" in your start menu in a "DivX" subdirectory under "Programs" (in Win98 SE.)

There is a step in the installation where you can choose not to install the player, but it's actually a pretty nice video player -- although it defaults to linking to the web on start-up. It's no better or worse than RealPlayer or WMP in that respect, though. The player does have Brightness, Contrast and Color controls in it, which is handy for some of the videos I've downloaded.

The player is not needed however, because installing the Codec enables both Realplayer and WMP to play the videos with no problem, and there is a setup utility for the codec where you can set brightnes, contrast, etc for all DivX coded videos.

The uninstall appears to remove BOTH the codec and player, so I don't recommend you install the player unless you're just curious.

(FWIW, it's a lot of work for about 40 seconds of video total -- and not very good quality videos at that. )

 

[intrigued]

Re: Re: Aha!, problem solved

OK, dowloading and installing "DivX bundle 5.0.2" is pretty straight forward. If you just keep clicking "next" it installs "DivX Codec" and "Divx Player 2.0 Alpha" in your start menu in a "DivX" subdirectory under "Programs" (in Win98 SE.)

There is a step in the installation where you can choose not to install the player, but it's actually a pretty nice video player -- although it defaults to linking to the web on start-up. It's no better or worse than RealPlayer or WMP in that respect, though. The player does have Brightness, Contrast and Color controls in it, which is handy for some of the videos I've downloaded.

The player is not needed however, because installing the Codec enables both Realplayer and WMP to play the videos with no problem, and there is a setup utility for the codec where you can set brightnes, contrast, etc for all DivX coded videos.

The uninstall appears to remove BOTH the codec and player, so I don't recommend you install the player unless you're just curious.

(FWIW, it's a lot of work for about 40 seconds of video total -- and not very good quality videos at that. )

As I said to you before, what you did here was above and beyond, and I really appreciate this. You put alot into this for me, and I am now saving this thread. Wow....you are something else!

You're right, this is alot of work. I find so much valuable info here that I am tempted to give it a shot, just to see if I can do it.
Thank you very much...huge smiles here.

I hope you have a lovely evening.