Hi all,

I'm new to this video thing but I am giving it a go on a friends website.

This video clip appears to be working fine on my machines (Win2k and XP Pro) with Windows Media Player installed (I have no other software so I used Windows Movie Maker for the clip which was ripped from his promotional DVD).

My first issue is that I have the Author and Artist Fields in the video clip with my name in them and I want to remove it (Google is my next stop). Any ideas on how?

Secondly I would appreciate if anyone would give it a try. It's approximately 1MB so it should play just fine on a broadband connection and only need minimal buffering on a good dial-up connection. My friend can't get it to play on his home computer so he is wondering if I have it set up right. He's sort of convinced that it is the fault of his home pc (very likely!) so I need something to prove to him that it is his pc and most other users (potential clients) would be able to view the video.

The website address is http://www.sipujij.nf.ca and it's on the hunting and fishing page.

The direct url for the video is http://www.sipujij.nf.ca/sipujij.wmv but I want to make sure that it works for everyone by simply clicking on the link on his site.

Thanks for any comments.

Rene

I think you did a good job. It buffers very quickly for me, and the quality is probably just right for web video.

Sadly, I don't know the program you mentioned. I've always used the free Windows Media Encoder program, although I don't think that supports the latest versions of WMV. It did, however, give you control over all the info fields.

He might have an older version of WMP. WMPv7 can't play files using a WMPv9 codec.

The file you linked has the audio in a WMPv9 codec (Windows Media Audio 9 32 kbps, 32 kHz, stereo (A/V) 1-pass CB) but the video as WMPv7.

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He might have an older version of WMP. WMPv7 can't play files using a WMPv9 codec.

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He's trying to view it with the newest version of WinAmp. I can view it with v.2.91 just fine. He is trying v5.03.

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The file you linked has the audio in a WMPv9 codec (Windows Media Audio 9 32 kbps, 32 kHz, stereo (A/V) 1-pass CB) but the video as WMPv7.

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How'd I do that??? I used Windows Movie Maker that is included with XP. I did recently upgrade my Media Player to version 9 though.

WinAmp uses the WMP codecs which are installed by WMP. What version of WinAmp you've got doesn't really matter.

I've no idea how to make Windows Movie Maker use an older codec. I remember talking about it to somebody recently and I think the best solution was to encode it was MPEG2 as that should work for nearly everything.

How'd I do that???

It's pretty mix 'n match. You can have different compression versions for WM audio and video. 7 is the one I prefer, by the way (for audio and video). But that's because WMP6.4 can't play anything after that (I believe), and I still use 6.4.

I got the Author sorted out. I just opened the video in Windows Movie Maker and redid it. Duh!

I also have the audio codec down to v8. I guess WMM just uses whatever Media Player has installed. I have v.8 of Media Player on this PC.

Uploading now... slow dial-up connection.

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WinAmp uses the WMP codecs which are installed by WMP. What version of WinAmp you've got doesn't really matter.

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That explains why he can't view it. Damn, I though WinAmp used its own codecs.

Any suggestions on what to use to convert this to a mpeg file?


I am new to this but I plan on doing a lot more as soon as I get my DVD burner in the next few days. Any opinions on the Sony DRU530A that I have coming... mixed reviews on the net. A few bad and a few really good.

Fantastic burner. Sony still makes the best ones, IMO. I've had mine for about a year and a half now (different model, of course) and burned countless discs on it, none of which went bad due to the drive. Others here have had negative things to say about it, but that's just what you get with products like this.

As for making an MPEG, did you mean how do you make one out of the WMV or out of the original DVD?

and I still use 6.4.

Upgrade to Media Player Classic. Works just like WMP 6.4, but supports newer codecs and such.

Upgrade to Media Player Classic.

Sorry, I wanted to reply to this but forgot. I've actually stopped using WMP for the most part. I tried Media Player Classic a while ago, but was terrible at the Matroska files I was trying to play. So I went back to WMP for a long while until, for a reason I can't quite remember, I switched to mplayer. I think it was because I'm positive that the concept of video codecs was created by the devil ("codecs is the devil!"), and merely loved the idea of downloading a bunch of files to the program's directory and having it use those.

I think the program is absolutely fantastic. What's unusual to me is that I'm hoping I'm never forced into using a GUI if they ever make a good one. All I have right now is an icon on my quicklaunch bar that I drag files onto when I want to play them. And having them play instantly is great.

mplayer for Windows