com/gspot/) or AVIcodec (http://
avicodec.duby.info), both of which are free. Just drag-drop the video file onto
GSpot (Figure 4-1) or AVIcodec, and the program will display the file??™s
video codec, audio codec, and other statistics.
The codec utility may indicate that the required codec is
already installed. As comforting as that may be, you might
still need to download and install the latest version of the
codec to play the troublesome video. Otherwise, you may
not have all the latest bugs...er, fixes.
If one of these tools can??™t identify the codec, the file is probably corrupted or
encoded with a nonstandard scheme. Provided you??™re not able to ask whoever
created the file for information about the software used, the easiest trick
is to open the file in a standard text editor and look for the four-digit 4CC
code near the beginning. Figure 4-2 shows the code buried in a file, DIVX in
this case, which indicates that the DivX decompressor is needed to play this
video.
Figure 4-1. Use GSpot to find the software necessary to play a given video clip
150 | Chapter 4: Working with Media
Armed with the name (or 4CC code) of the codec, proceed to http://www.
fourcc.org/fcccodec.htm, and download the codec installer from the list. If
the 4CC code isn??™t there, a quick Google search (along with the word
???codec???) should turn up some useful leads.
The SLD Active Codec Selector (free, www.skynet4ever.tk) is
a handy tool you can use to list registered codecs on your PC
and even selectively disable codecs you suspect might be
causing problems.
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