no picture only sound? whats wrong?

[omniSprinter]

I've downloaded a couple .avi's where all I get is audio with no picture.

I have the latest divx codec and tried using several different players

got any suggestions?

much graditude

[Galileo]

The file uses a codec you still don't have,
or the file is corrupted.

Just because you have 1 divx codec installed doesn't mean it will play them all. Look how many codecs there are:
http://www.am-soft.ru/fourcc.html

To find what codec was used for your file:
1. Open the AVI file using WORDPAD
2. Near the end of the first or second line you will see the codec's ID. Look for the characters "vids" followed by the FourCC code. It looks like "vidsmp43" for MPEG4v3clips or I263 = "vidsI263".

Now go look up which one corresponds to that code on the site I just mentioned above.

or...

Go download the program called G-Spot, and it will tell you.
Here: http://www.headbands.com/gspot/index.htm

[Krell]

DONT open an AVI in a txt editor to read a header, most of you will crash your PC's or never see the file get completely opened, even risk corrupting your file.

Stick with Gspot or AVIcodec, THATS what they are for. If it says the file is an XviD then you need to make sure XviD is installed, and a direct show filter.

Go to Doom9 and click on Download, then Filters, Codecs, to find what you need.

Also, stick to the audio\video section for this sort of request. It would benefit you to go back and read thru the threads there.

.

[omniSprinter]

Heads up Galileo, thanks for the advice
g-spot hit it right on the head

needed xvid codec, and the link was a google search away
http://www.roeder.goe.net/~koepi/xvid.shtml

[neoufo51]

Better yet, uninstall Divx and Xvid and use the latest Alpha version of FFdshow. It's a directshow filter that plays Xivd and Divx as well as a few other formats, along with these nice tools to help the picture quality. The biggest advantage is it uses half the CPU that the codec need to decompress the video, and one filter is more convienient than having a bunch of codecs. Also, postprocessing turned all the way up, with auto quality control looks BEAUTIFUL on my machine.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow/

Trust me, you'll never need DIvx or Xvid again, unless of course you're the encoding type, which most people aren't.

[Krell]

I agree, I only had one movie that wasnt improved with it set to auto quality control. I think its more intuitive than others' builds. Good suggestion.


EDIT: I had an O/S that was a few hours old, no Nimo or other codecs packs used. I just installed the ffdshow-alpha, and got an error msg "This application has failed to start because MSVCR70.dll was not found".

I downloaded a copy of the MSVCR70.dl and extracted it to my C:\windows\System32 folder.
http://www.dll-files.com/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/dll-files/topdown/download.pl?file=msvcr70.zip==

I then reinstalled the ffdshow-alpha, with no problems.
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ffdshow/ffdshow-20030103.exe?download

I chose 5 movies at random, all played well. I recommend putting checkmarks in all file types under FFDshow-alpha Properties > Codecs. This is not the "Auto" version that I have installed on my other machine, so I retract my earlier statement.

[Al13]

This may sound weird, but try www.fasttrackmovies.com. Aside form just sig2dat links, they list the codecs needed for almost any movie available.

[neoufo51]

MSVCR70.dll is the dll used for compiling the source files, which are available as it is an open source project.

Make sure you get the exe file (binary) so that you get an installer rather then the source code.

[neoufo51]

@DJ

Most likely, you're missing Xvid, get it here. MAKE SURE YOU GET THE BINARY, NOT THE SOURCE. You'll need it for many of the new flicks out there anyway.
http://www.roeder.goe.net/~koepi/xvid.shtml

However, if that doesn't work, you probably a need a more obscure codec, so go here...
http://www.headbands.com/gspot/index.htm

Download the feature program, Gspot, and scan the file with it when you finish downloading the vid. It will ID what codecs you need to play the file. You can download them by looking them up in google.com. .