Hello Everyone
I’m new here. All movies are coming in some weird format. New player required. What is that. I was downloading before, .avi was .avi Now, nothing works.
Is this normal, or someone got greedy?
Thanks
An .avi file is a container. It contains an audio stream interleaved with a video stream. No specification exists for how either stream is to be encoded, so there are many different ways which are mostly incompatible with each other. Encoding matters. If the video stream is encoded with DivX, or its FOSS counterpart XVid, then that’s the important thing to know. If the audio stream is unencoded PCM, or encoded with MP3, that’s important to know.
However the streams are encoded, you need installed filters for that encoding.
If your movie is encoded some other way, you will need filters and a player that can handle it. There are many different ways to digitally encode audio and video. You will have to become aware of what you’re trying to view/listen to.
This isn’t like buying a DVD, where you can expect some standard. if you’re going to download movies, you will need to learn to use your head, and to educate yourself about how digital video and digital audio work. It’s a difficult and technical subject, which you will need to plunge into in order to figure out what you’re doing. Most of all you need the initiative to teach yourself, to use the net to find out answers for yourself.
However, I get a distinct feeling that this boils down to him just downloading some fake video files and not even realizing it.
FXexe,
Welcome to the forum.
As kluelos said above, the combination of container files and encoded formats (output video codec) is huge. You could have, let’s say, a file named “video001.avi” but we’re not able to know what’s “inside” that file, how the file was encoded. It could be encoded as a 1920x1080 HD movie or just as a 3GP cell shot.
if you’re going to download movies, you will need to learn to use your head, and to educate yourself about how digital video and digital audio work.
I totally agree with these kluelos’ words. Not always you’ll find the answers in a two-clicks distance when it comes about audio & video encoding.
Anyway, beyond the theory, I will offer you two programs that are totally useful.
■ If you can’t play some specific files (that .avi file, for example), you’ll be out of codecs, for sure. You need some missing codecs and that’s the reason why you’re not able to play some audio & video files.
You can download and install each missing codec, one by one, which is a pain in the a:club_suit:
(:P). Or you can download a lot of codecs installing a codec pack. The latter is the preferred option.
I invite you to download and install K-Lite Codec Pack 5.9.0 Mega (the last version), which is, basically, an installer with a step-by-step guide, where it lets you to choose what install and what not. This also includes a light, basic player (recommended) which is optional.
I bet whatever you want that once the K-Lite Codec Pack 5.9.0 Mega is installed you’ll be able to play a lot of audio & video files that you couldn’t before.
• All K-Lite Codec Pack 5.9.0’s bundle options
• General information about K-Lite Codec Pack
■ Another program you’d probably love is SUPER © v2010.build.37 (the last version), which is a decoder & encoder audio & video files, that lets you convert files among several audio & video formats. SUPER © converts video files, so you can play them in your cell phone, or your iPod, or your MP4 portable player, or your DVD-Player, etc. It also extracts the audio of a video and saves it as a MP3 or Ogg Vorbis audio, among many others. So, if you have an .avi file of a ripped DVD-Video of your favorite band and want to listen to the audio when you walk in the city, you can do it now. 
However, I must warning you: SUPER © uses A LOT of CPU and RAM. So, install this program only if you have a powerful computer there (Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, i7 processors recommended with 1,024 MB or more). If you don’t have a multi-thread PC, you’d better forget installing and using SUPER © (especially, when decoding/encoding big files).
• SUPER ©
Finally, I want to apologize to administrators because this is the CometBird forum and NOT an audio-video-codec forum, so this may be an offtopic thread. Sorry about that.
I can’t help you here, FXexe, so if you need more info, search the web or send a PM to me.
Hope this helps.
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