H.264/MPEG-4 AVC

RickD wrote on 6/9/2008, 2:29 PM

Please help me to understand something about acquiring codecs. I have some AVI files that are encoded with H.264/MPEG-4 AVC which is not installed on my computer If I do a Google search on the name I find plenty of web sites offering free codec downloads. Just about any one of them I go to has either pop-up ads, or the downloads they offer appear to have virus contamination as they are either flagged by Norton Anti-Virus, or they display strange messages about downloading utilities that I don't recognize, or displaying messages that look ominous.

Am I doing something wrong or is this just the way it is with codecs? Where do I go to download and install legitimate ibes?

Comments

Sebaz wrote on 6/9/2008, 3:27 PM

I would say that for you to be able to play that format the safest is the latest stable version of ffdshow at http://www.ffdshow.info/

If it doesn't work well, you can uninstall it, but that's a filter that will allow you to play almost anything, and has a great set of post-processing tools.

Marco. wrote on 6/9/2008, 3:42 PM

Vegas uses its own AVC codecs. Doesn't your files work in Vegas?

Marco

craftech wrote on 6/9/2008, 4:00 PM

If you download and install the freeware Super (c), it should have everything you need to do what you want to do.

John

Terje wrote on 6/9/2008, 5:44 PM

If you want to play the video, not edit it, download VLC media player. It comes with all the codecs you can imagine and some you couldn't possibly. It also plays anything you throw at it, even partly downloaded or severely damaged files. For playing video there is nothing like Video Land (VLC).

LReavis wrote on 6/10/2008, 2:00 PM

I had to uninstall ffdshow in order to get Camtasia to work properly - Camtasia tech support claimed that it had some code that wasn't kosher

John_Cline wrote on 6/10/2008, 2:12 PM

Installing ffdshow can break a lot of things.