Hey all. My WMP has a lot of trouble finding the right codecs to play AVI files. So I''m looking for opinions on good video conversion programs. It doesn''t have to be free, just effective.

AVI is a container format, like MPEG, or MOV (Quicktime), or OGG. These container formats contain streams of data encoding in a certain way.

For example, the audio stream could be encoding as an MP3 or Vorbis or whatever. Likewise with the video stream. You need the codecs for the audio and video stream as well as a player that knows how to use the container format to view such a file.

If all you want to do is convert from one container format to another, that''s relatively easy to do (without loss in quality).

If you want to change the encoding of one or more of the streams, that will take a while and you will very likely lose quality in the process.

Personally, while I don''t do too much of it, all the movie conversion I do is with MEncoder and SOX. It works really well once you learn it. I have no idea how easy it is to get MEncoder running in Windows, but I do know there is a Windows port of it.

quote:Original post by TechnoHydra
Hey all. My WMP has a lot of trouble finding the right codecs to play AVI files. So I''m looking for opinions on good video conversion programs. It doesn''t have to be free, just effective.

Your computer won''t be able to convert the AVI files without the codecs.

Visit www.vcdhelp.com. This site has a lot of links to obsure codecs so that you can play all of those porn movies you dowload from Kazaa.