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Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 7:16 am
by churin
WMP on XP appears being unable to play mp4. Is there a way to enable it to do so or what software can?

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 7:26 am
by just brew it!
Microsoft does not provide the necessary codec for MP4. You can either find a 3rd party MP4 codec, or install an alternate media player like VLC.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 7:42 am
by Neutronbeam
just brew it! wrote:
Microsoft does not provide the necessary codec for MP4. You can either find a 3rd party MP4 codec, or install an alternate media player like VLC.


What he said. VideoLAN's VLC is free, can play just about anything, and--I believe--just added Blu-ray playback to its capabilities.

Also, nice to see another Atlantan in the forums!

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 7:54 am
by yogibbear

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 7:59 am
by Forge
VLC has all the most common codecs and handlers built in, so it's a good quick fix.

WMP will play MP4, and not too badly. The critical detail here is that WMP handles MP4 just fine, it's just likely having problems with the codecs used inside the MP4 you're trying. MP4 is a container, just like AVI. They can have a wide variety of things inside.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 8:38 am
by churin
yogibbear wrote:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=vlc&l=1

Thanks for your response. It is a very interesting way to provide a link.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 8:41 am
by Forge
churin wrote:
yogibbear wrote:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=vlc&l=1

Thanks for your response. It is a very interesting way to provide a link.

And not condescending at all.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 8:54 am
by just brew it!
Forge wrote:
And not condescending at all.

LMGTFY was amusing the first couple of times; IMO it has worn out its welcome though. In this case it wasn't even really "appropriate" since the OP probably wouldn't have started this thread in the first place if he'd already heard of VLC.

I may need to add a Forum Rule 13 -- "LMGTFY no longer funny. Just don't."

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 9:02 am
by MadManOriginal
In before the lmgtfy ban!

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=let+me+google+that+for+you

Recursive loop ftw.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 9:20 am
by Flying Fox
Forge wrote:
WMP will play MP4, and not too badly. The critical detail here is that WMP handles MP4 just fine, it's just likely having problems with the codecs used inside the MP4 you're trying. MP4 is a container, just like AVI. They can have a wide variety of things inside.

Not WMP on XP AFAIK. WMP on Win7 OTOH, plays all MP4 files I can throw at it so far.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 9:31 am
by churin
just brew it! wrote:
Microsoft does not provide the necessary codec for MP4. You can either find a 3rd party MP4 codec, or install an alternate media player like VLC.

Where can I get that necessary codec for MP4? Problem with vlc is that it does not seems to be able to memorize its graphic equalizer settings.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 9:43 am
by churin
Flying Fox wrote:
Forge wrote:
WMP will play MP4, and not too badly. The critical detail here is that WMP handles MP4 just fine, it's just likely having problems with the codecs used inside the MP4 you're trying. MP4 is a container, just like AVI. They can have a wide variety of things inside.

Not WMP on XP AFAIK. WMP on Win7 OTOH, plays all MP4 files I can throw at it so far.

I am sure Forge meant WMP on XP. I have been playing MP4 by WMP on W7.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 10:01 am
by Norphy
churin wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Microsoft does not provide the necessary codec for MP4. You can either find a 3rd party MP4 codec, or install an alternate media player like VLC.

Where can I get that necessary codec for MP4? Problem with vlc is that it does not seems to be able to memorize its graphic equalizer settings.


Try the KLite codec pack. It has several DirectShow codecs built into it so they'll work with WMP and any other DirectShow player.

http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 10:46 am
by ryko
Vlc is a good choice, but I also use mpc-hc (media player classic home cinema). Seems to handle things slightly smoother than vlc but it sometimes won't play a file where as vlc plays everything you throw at it.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 1:30 pm
by churin
Video and audio from VLC is way out of sync. MPC-hc is lot better but still the same problem depending on video. The player is running on XP on Petium III 1GHz, that may be the reason.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 1:56 pm
by bthylafh
Another recommend for the K-Lite Codec Pack. I'd get the Full pack so you can play pretty much anything.

http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

Not really a fan of VLC, mostly because its audio playback sounds rather different from other players for some reason.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 6:52 pm
by The Egg
MP4 is a container format. It can be used to hold several different types of video and/or audio compression. I would use VLC to open the MP4, and then under the "Tools" menu click "Codec Information". Once you know which specific codec is giving you trouble, we can better recommend a different media player.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 7:42 pm
by credible
Hi there, give this one a shot, been using it myself for 3 weeks and like it very much.

http://www.foobar2000.org/

Foobar2000

Main features
Supported audio formats: MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU, SND... and more with additional components.
Gapless playback.
Full unicode support.
Easily customizable user interface layout.
Advanced tagging capabilities.
Support for ripping Audio CDs as well as transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component.
Full ReplayGain support.
Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 8:07 pm
by just brew it!
Yeah, before I switched to Linux as my primary OS, Foobar2000 was my media player of choice. I really wish they'd do a Linux port...

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 9:07 pm
by credible
Absolutely no idea if this would be useful to you jbi, but a quick search and this popped up, I have no doubt you have been around looking,lol, but maybe not recently.

Its just an answer from ubuntu forums.

There are a few great substitutes, but no one linux program does everything foobar can. I run foobar2000 under wine, and it is the ONLY windows program I have not found a satisfactory linux replacement for.
I am currently running foobar2000 1.1 running under wine from the 10.04 repositories. The only drawbacks are a few graphics glitches. The only one of which i find a bit irritating is that the scroll bars in facet windows disappear sometimes. They do, however, reappear when you scroll, so there's no loss of functionality. I've tried foobar2000 under the latest version of wine, but I found there were more glitches and bugs.
If you have any trouble getting foobar to work right with wine, you can head over to the hydrogenaudio.org forums for some good threads on the subject.


It would be nice if it helped you:)

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 9:09 pm
by trieste1s

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 9:20 pm
by just brew it!
I did try running it under wine for a bit, but concluded that it was just too glitchy. Lately I've been using Audacious + jack + jack-rack (plus a pulseaudio-to-jack adapter plugin since most "normal" Linux desktop apps actually want to use the pulseaudio stack these days), and I've been pretty happy with this setup.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 9:26 pm
by credible
Thats good to hear, I would go nuts without access to my flac files of say Pink Floyds Animals for instance, so many interesting sounds going on in there:)

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 9:31 pm
by PenGun
just brew it! wrote:
I did try running it under wine for a bit, but concluded that it was just too glitchy. Lately I've been using Audacious + jack + jack-rack (plus a pulseaudio-to-jack adapter plugin since most "normal" Linux desktop apps actually want to use the pulseaudio stack these days), and I've been pretty happy with this setup.

Mplayer does everything you need in Linux. I run it from midnight commander, with a tweaked extension file, and I would not have it any other way. Surf to file ... hit enter ... file plays ... any damn file at all ... well almost. Uses ALSA natively for sound. With the key controls built into mplayer you have control. Right arrow 10 sec jump, up arrow 60 sec jump, page up 10 min jump. You can sync sound and video using the number pad's + and - . Those are just a few. VLC which I have has a GUI and is way more hassle to do things with. Actually mplayer has a GUI too, I forgot, I never use it.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Sat May 19, 2012 11:06 pm
by td1353l
klite codec pack will let you watch everything using windows media player(or classic media player) except flv's, so far in my experiences.

Re: Software to play mp4

Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 10:08 am
by IAmGhostDog
Media Player Classic - Home Cinema plays everything I throw at it including downloaded .flv's
http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/media-player-features.html