GSPOT: Find The Right Codec for Your Videos

In the support forums of Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 there’s this interesting paradox with dealing with videos and all the different types of media; cause there’s all these different ones and it’s hard to keep up with…

And this is going to be ubiquitous with pretty much all video editing software at some point or some level. So, while this post started with the Windows Live Movie Maker forum, it’s for other applications as well.

Let’s just say you’re using a media package and you go to edit some video and it says you can’t; your missing a codec. Or if the video, or audio is playing weird; you need a codec, or you need to update yours.

There’s good news though, there’s a program that specializes in telling you what you need to know about your video files; it’s called GSPOT [from headbands.com].

The container will tell you about the file you opened. It’s basic standard stuff

The audio section will tell you more about the audio codec that’s being used in that video. And this where you need to ensure you’re using the proper codec to avoid issues of sound not playing, or playing fast, or just random issues with audio.

The video section seems to be the most problematic area for most people. Most people can’t open the videos, it crashes their applications when trying to edit the files.

Once the program has given you the details about the codecs, you now know which ones to go find.

For example, with Windows Live Movie Maker, a lot of people are having issues with MOV files and h.264 or MP4 files. And I have some information here from one of my MOV files that import directly in to Windows Live Movie Maker [and it works as a MP4 extension].

Some details:

You can spend all day searching for the right codec, but for the most part, there are packages/packs that have just about everything you’ll need to make the video you’re working with, work.

You can visit a site called www.free-codecs.com; it’s incredibly helpful if you’re searching for a specific codec.

But as a suggestion, you can try to download the most ubiquitous codecs yourself and installing them fairly easily… they’re both FREE, REPUTABLE and updated regularly.

Links:
     http://www.free-codecs.com/download/k_lite_codec_pack.htm
     http://www.free-codecs.com/download/vista_codec_package.htm
     http://www.windows7codecs.com/

I hope this helps…

Thank you,
Larry Henry Jr.
LEHSYS.com