Fixing Windows XP Annoyances

Chapter 3. Multimedia

In the old days, video problems meant using a butter knife to pry a tape out of your VCR. But in our modern Windows XP era, video hassles result from the complex interplay among player software, hardware (and its drivers), a baffling assortment of codecs, and Microsoft’s DirectX extensions. And of course, there’s also sound to consider, plus television piped through your PC (via the Media Center Edition of Windows XP), as well as managing digital photos and burning CDs and DVDs. I’ll tackle these and other media annoyances in this chapter.

VIDEO

Play Stubborn Videos

THE ANNOYANCE: When I try to open a video clip in Windows Media Player, it says it can’t play the file. Not surprisingly, the More Information button doesn’t provide any useful information.

THE FIX: Chances are you don’t have the required codec installed on your system. A codec (which stands for compressor/decompressor) is software responsible for storing data in a video file and subsequently extracting it; in order to play any given video, you must use the same codec that was used to create the video in the first place, regardless of the player application you’re using.

To figure out what codec was used, you’ll need a program such as GSpot (free, http://www.headbands.com/gspot/) or AVIcodec (free, http://avicodec.duby.info). Just drag and drop the video file onto GSpot or AVIcodec, and the program will display the file’s codec. (If it doesn’t, the file is probably corrupted, or was encoded with ...