Video-playing woes?

Unknown

Hi all. As someone who does a lot of video encoding, it's all too common to see videos posted and then followed by complaints by people who can't play them. It also gets tiresome--not to sound rude about it--to try to encode and upload different versions for different media players and operating systems; to ask whether a person has Windows, a Mac, or Linux, or has Windows Media Player, Quicktime, Real Player, etc.; to troubleshoot and ask them how they're trying to open a file, or to tell them to get a different media player just for one file type.

There is an insane number of codecs and formats out there. Trying to make everybody and their OS and media players happy, and helping people to troubleshoot and get the right media player, means more work than encoders really can afford to do. At the same time, "I can't open it!" is frustrating to hear. Videos are shared because we want people to see them.

</whine>

What's better is to have a media player that can play just about anything--for free, even. Not only that, but it doesn't annoy you with ads, nags to upgrade to a Pro version, run tasks in the background despite your telling it not to, etc.

Please take a look at VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc
It runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

It plays everything I throw at it, including FLV files. If more people were aware of VLC and used it, I suspect there'd be fewer headaches.

If you like VLC, perhaps let other people know about it when they're having trouble. Maybe we can eliminate a lot of headaches out there on the Internets.

Oh and if you're already playing streaming video just fine in your browser, I'd tell VLC, while installing, NOT to install browser plugins. In that case, it's better not to fix what ain't broke. That's because some websites are stupid and will insist on a particular media player plugin to be used--you might be okay, but everyones mileage may vary. I can't test every website and tell you what'll happen.

Cheers!

dollarflame6

lol, you should do their commercial.

I like Media Player Classic, which plays almost everything- the exception being flv. I don't mind tho, cuz I also have an flv player. Media Player Classic was first developed by some kid in college during his spare time- makes me feel like a real anti-big-company person, lol.

Granted tho, your vlc sounds better since it plays flv too.

PS- www.free-codecs.com is awesome. check it out- I've been lovin it for years

kissteam1

When I first saw this I was like, "Is this a legitimate post or has their account been taken over by someone?" You should work in sales, bb

yak63geese

Thanks for the tip, Tabetha! If I find I'm missing a codec, I'll check it out.
VLC is interesting to me because it runs on all platforms as well as able to play everything (so far!)...

Yea, I write like this sometimes because I am a control freak who wants to make everything right (and lessen work for others), and this is the control freak's nicer side, haha. I can't seem to help it. I think people just get used to it . But really, I was encoding something yesterday and had to do it several different ways because it was inevitable that someone was going to say "I can't play this"... And it still happened. I get down about all of the work. I think I'm just bothered by that and (totally unrelated) by being volunteered recently to set up more computers for people who are too afraid to stick in a g**damn Windows CD and follow instructions and use Google to find out how to secure it. In cases like that, I'm just going to start saying I don't "know" Windows anymore; that's actually partially true since using Linux for several years now, and a Mac, and it's totally true where Vista is concerned that I have the faintest idea how Vista is different and I don't care to find out. And it turns into a two-day job if I want to make a machine that's secure and set up in a way that won't have them calling me back in a week because of a problem. Any others here always get pinned as the Free Tech Help Slave who has to do everyone else's work and reading for them? I used to enjoy it. I just want to put Ubuntu or SUSE on one of these machines but my husband says that's unacceptable. It'd still be a lot of work, too.

Guess I needed to relieve some stress too, hah.