Questions about "decompressors"

inuyasha_chick_8706 · Post by **inuyasha_chick_8706** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 11:21 am

I downloaded a vid last night, and when I went to open it this morning, it was having problems. It says it is "Unable to download decompressor". I tried a few things, but nothing seems to work... Any suggestions?

* The mp3 portion of the download is working just fine... it's the video itself that won't play.

risk one · Post by **risk one** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 1:27 pm

You need certain software to play back the video stream of the file, called a codec. Which software you need depends on which software the video was encoded with. When you get the error-message there should be button marked mor information or something, giving you a four character code (like "DX50"). enter this information into google, and you'll know which codec to download.

If the error message doesn't have a "more info" button, you could download virtualdub ( http://www.virtualdub.org/ ) and open the file in that. If it doesn't open the error message will give you the code, if it does open (which would be weird), you can find the code under file> file information.

Arigatomina · Post by **Arigatomina** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 3:02 pm

It's probably an xvid file - if it has an avi extension. Try getting this codec pack - install it and you should be able to watch the vid in Windows Media Player:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=202948

If it has an mpg extension, it's more likely an mpeg2 encode - try doing some google searches for Winamp 1.87 (not the newer versions). There are some vids floating around here that won't play with regular mpg2 players.