Maximum PC

Thanks to Maximum PC for turning me on to handbrake in their article on ripping DVDs way back in March of 09.

Lately I have been using version 0.9.5 to compress my FRAPs captures from games. I've just been using the Regular-High Profile, which uses the MP4 container, H.264 video format, and AAC audio.

This has worked great in the past for my 64bit Win7 Home Premium computer as the completed MP4 files get a thumbnail view created in explorer as well as play back fine in Windows Media Player with no added codecs to download.

The funny problem I have had recently though is that with the exact same preset settings, new video files I convert show a standard windows media icon instead of a thumbnail view and when I try to play them in WMP it takes a little bit for the player to start, like it is thinking, and then it only plays the audio from the file. Here is the kicker, the old files I previously encoded, still show their thumbnail views (and windows creates new ones when they are copied to new folders) and WMP plays them back fine. Using gspot to check out their codec information the new files and old seem to be identical.

Using VLC media player or even Quicktime the new files play fine. The only thing I think I might have done was to try to use handbrake's 'Update Built-in Presets' in the Presets menu. I used that once, but I am unsure as to if this was when the problem started showing up. I've tried to completely uninstall handbrake and wipe all the AppData, program files and user data folders of anything, but it still won't encode a file windows likes.

Anyone else having this problem? I'm not sure where it is a problem at, and handbrake's support forum doesn't seem to want me to post without logs and other stuff. I can't seem to find any other information around the internet where someone else had this same problem.

I was hoping to find a solution just to keep my video collection viewable by the lowest common denominator instead of having friends and relatives go get codecs or players to be able to view them.

Thanks for any help.

Try this app to run your videos, I have had nothing but success with it:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Nasty

You missed something Nasty.


I assume that you are still playing this files on WMP12, it should be able to play it no problem. Try the video in another Windows 7 install and see if it plays.

Other thing is that WMP12 is the only version of WMP to play H.264 videos natively. Any other version you would need codecs for. Converting them to .wmv would be the lowest common denominator.

LOL had a little chuckle at that.

You are correct, Airheadq, I was wanting to play these in WMP12, and in so doing be able to share them so other people could play them without the hoop jumping of installing codecs.

My friends and I have done a little more research since my post too, and I have found that this is a problem with WMP12 and not with handbrake like I was thinking for some reason. Basically we discovered that the WMP12 H.264 codec is, let me see how can I put this, incomplete, for lack of a term that better describes my current dissappointment. We did some testing and found out that the codec basically doesn't support several of the resolutions our game videos were recorded at. The ones we have found are:
1920x1200
1600x1200
1600x1248
I'm sure there are more, but those are the resolutions we found. Other videos encoded with all the same settings and different resolutions play back just fine. (Also if I use handbrake to change a 1920x1200 to 1920x1080 it will play back fine too.)

So I had resolve that, OK, I will have to install a codec for my H.264 files since Windows again cannot keep up with Apple (I'm embarrassed as a PC user) and they wonder why they can't be as successful capitalizing on the multimedia market out there. Anyway, back to it, I installed ffdshow tryouts then through a little more research found out that Microsoft in their infinite wisdom again, had locked down the codec so I can't even use a different one. There appears to be some programs out there or registry change you can make to change this, but I haven't quite gotten there yet.

Anyone else feel free to chime in but these are my findings so far. Microsoft didn't quite make it to the finish line once again.

It seems that they stick to common resolutions. It might be fine and dandy among PC users, but mainstream it's going to be 16:9, so 1080p, 720p, etc...

I'm pretty sure you can have other codecs in WMP. However, they might just have their own plugins like VLC where it doesn't use external codecs. From that standpoint seems like a good idea since you don't get conflicting codecs and such. *Further research suggests that it will use their codec first and any others as a fall back

Also, remember to get the right version. 32-bit programs will only see 32-bit versions of the codec and same applies to 64-bit programs. Lastly, didn't you say you solved the issue with playback? What are you trying to do now?

I think I mistyped. I meant to say that I had resolved that I would have to install a codec, as in accepted the fact. But no, I hadn't fixed anything unfortunatly. I understand sticking with 1080p and 720p, but it is just funny that 1920x1200 and 1600x1200 aren't supported as they are pretty darn common PC resolutions.