Determine Audio & Video Codec Required To Play Downloaded Movies
Author: Raymond19 Jun
I’ve seen many cases that movies downloaded from Internet can’t be played properly… A normal downloaded movie is around 700MB and it takes hours to complete downloading it. It’s surely frustrating that you wasted hours downloading a movie that you eagerly want to watch but then you only get the sound but no video. Or, you get only the video but no sound. You’ll be cursing the person who rip the video and uploaded the video file.
Before doing that and deleting the downloaded movie away, you are very likely to be able to play the movie perfectly together with the audio and video IF you have the correct codec installed. A codec is a device or program capable of performing encoding and decoding on a digital data stream or signal. Different rippers use different codecs to rip the movie off a CD or DVD. So in order to play correctly, you need to install the codec that’s used to rip the disc.
Thankfully there are a few good tools that that supplies technical and tag information about a video or audio file.
I found 3 free tools that is able to tell you what codec is necessary in order to play a video or audio file.
1. MediaInfo
When you load a movie file into MediaInfo, it’ll give you the following information.
General: title, author, director, album, track number, date, duration…
Video: codec, aspect, fps, bitrate…
Audio: codec, sample rate, channels, language, bitrate…
Text: language of subtitle
Chapters: number of chapters, list of chapters
I like this tool as it’s not very complicated by giving you the unnecessary information. Simply load the movie file, it’ll detect what video and audio required to play. There’s a button on the main interface where you can click to go to the official website of the video codec or audio codec. Download the codec, install it and you’re all set to watch the downloaded video.
2. AVIcodec
AVIcodec is able to tell you the codec required and where to download it. It is able to read AVI & DIVX, ASF & WMV, Real (.rm, .rmvb), Ogg (.ogg, .ogm), Mpeg-(S)VCD-DVD (.mpg, .vob), FLV and all those handled by DirectShow (.mp3, …). Just load the video or audio file, and it will show you the information. Clicking on the small “web” button will bring you to the official website to download the codec.
Current AVIcodec version is quite outdated. There’s a newer version for beta test which is said to be available till end of March 2007, but it’s still available. Looks like AVIcodec is not actively being developed.
3. afreeCodecVT
Easily determine the Audio and Video codec required to view your video. Once the codec or problem is determined; you may easily search for the codec or tool to solve your issue using the software.
Only reads AVI files. It doesn’t bring you to the official website to download the required codecs. Searching for codec download links in afreeCodec and afreeDLL doesn’t work. The link where it says “View a scenario in which afreeCodecVT is used to solve a issue.” in HELP section doesn’t work. Codec wizard doesn’t work as well. A lot of function in this tool will bring you to afreeCodecVT’s website but I think the website has changed and this tool doesn’t point to the correct page.
4. GSpot
There is no need to install GSpot. Just download, extract and run GSpot.exe. GSpot is able to tell you whether you’ve installed the codec required to play the movie file you examine. If it says “Codec(s) are Installed”, then you can play without problems. If it says “Codec(s) are NOT Installed”, then you have to manually search for the codecs in Google. Would be nice if it has a database of direct link to download the required codecs.
[ Download GSpot ]
From all 4 codec recognition tools above, I prefer to use MediaInfo. It is able to support many types of files and recognize many codecs. MediaInfo is actively being developed and don’t require any installation. It also brings you to the correct website to download the official required codec.
Update: Sorry guys, totally forgotten about GSpot which is the most famous of them all. Just updated this post with GSpot.
Technorati Tags: codec, mediainfo, avicodec, afreecodec, video
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11 Responses for "Determine Audio & Video Codec Required To Play Downloaded Movies"
I think GSpot is the most famous eh?
[...] Thankfully there are a few good tools that that supplies technical and tag information about a video or audio file. (more…) [...]
Thanks ice for reminding me. I totally forgotten about GSpot because I don’t really use it. Anyway, I’ve updated this post with GSpot.
I loves to handy mplayer in my flashdrive
Wow, good news for movie lovers like me. Thanks, now i got all the codes which i need.
The other advantage with Gspot is that if you have a file with the wrong extension it will tell you, at least within certain limits, what the correct extension is. For instance, recently I was given a few video files that were supposed to be .mpg video, at least according to the extension and my friend. However, all my media players refused to play them, simply giving a cannot render message. I checked them with avicodec (my first choice codec checker as I have it on right click context menu) and it couldn’t decipher the codecs required. So I fired up Gspot and dropped them onto it and straight away it told me they were actually .zip files with .mpg extensions.
The person who gave them to me later explained that he had batch renamed a folder full of files with the .mpg extension forgetting that some of the files in it were actually zipped mpg files. When I changed them to a .zip extension and extracted the files they contained they worked fine. Without Gspot I would have given up on them, at least until I had gotten hold of my friend.
i like cs and mario
Avi codec is fantastic. I could download the required codec through it ..Thanks
Is there also one showing the codec used in a streaming video online ? because most of those above are only working on files that are on the harddisk …
thanks
dziobas rar player can play videos even if the file is corrupted
That was good article.
Do you or does someone know any softwares that can detect the required audio or video codecs of a .bin movie?
I don’t understand why people are seeding movies that are ripped in images. For instance framerate can’t be checked out to adjust timing for subtitles – or at least I don’t know how.
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