It is strongly recommended that you install Video Codecs on your PC if you are doing a lot of video related works. A free and useful video codec pack can be downloaded from the following link:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Codec_Pack.htm
When you encounter problems with various Video Editor, Joiner, Splitter, Clipper, Trimmer, installing some codecs may help.
1) Windows Media Format 9 Series Runtime to convert to WMF/ASF fromats. You can download the Runtime file directly from Microsoft. Downloading directly from Microsoft will ensure that you have the latest version.
Microsoft Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/player.aspx
2) Your PC may also need Microsoft DirectX Version 8 or above if you are using Windows 95/98 or Me. Below is Microsoft DirectX link:
www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.aspx
3) If you use Macromedia Flash files, you will have to install Macromedia Flash Media Player to display it. Download Flash Player from the following link:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashplayer/
4) DivX Codec downloading:
http://www.divx.com/divx/windows/
DivX codec is a brand-name video codec (compression-decompression) technology based on the MPEG-4 standard that compresses video to small size with a high degree of quality. When trying to play video files in DivX codec, you must have this codec installed on your PC so that Windows Media Player can play it.
5) XviD Codec downloading:
http://www.xvidmovies.com/codec/
XviD is an open source MPEG-4 video codec. Originally based on OpenDivX, XviD was started by a group of volunteer programmers after the OpenDivX source was closed. So generally, Xvid would provide a better quality and smaller file size compared with DivX. But it seems that XviD is not used as commonly as DivX.
6) Huffyuv Codec downloading:
http://www.canadiancontent.net/tech/download/Huffyuv.html
A guy named Ben Rudiak-Gould wrote this wonderful little codec which is a lossless compression codec for both YUV and RGB video data. A Video file in such codec will be in a very good quality since it is nearly uncompressed. But its size would be very huge, as well. So it is commonly used in certain video editing program.
Necessary Players and Tools Different video formats may require different playback tools, or you will not be able to play them properly. Secondly, some of them are necessary tools which do the transferring jobs for certain devices, such as iPod and Archos.
QuickTime Player:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/win.html
It is a playback tool offered by Apple. You'd better play Apple Video and Audio formats, such as MOV, MP4, 3GP and 3G2 with it.
iTunes:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/
It is also a powerful tool offered by Apple. Besides the playback for MOV and MP4, as well as many other functions, it is a necessary tool to transfer video files to iPod. It means you need it to put video files into iPod after the conversion is done.
RealPlayer:
http://www.real.com/
It is a popular player which can support many popular video files. It is a must when watching Real Video files, such as RM, RAM and RA.
Winamp:
http://www.winamp.com/player/
It is an easy-to-use player. It can supports most of popular video formats playback, such as MPEG, WMV and AVI, and audio formats such as MP3, WMA and WAV. It also can detect certain necessary information of the media file during the playback.
Windows Media Player 10 upgrade:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp10/default.aspx
If you are using Windows 2000/2003/XP, you'd better upgrade your Windows Media Player to 10.0. Firstly, it is a must for our program to perform WMV encoding. Secondly, it will support much more video formats and codec and will be more stable to play WMV files in higher version. The last but not the least, you need it to transfer/sync video files to Archos.
