I'm making some avi's to be read on someone else's w*ws machine. It
suddenly occurred to me I haven't a clue what avi codecs they'll have
installed; I also know they won't know how to find out.

Does anyone have a list of w*ws (98!!) "standard" ones please?

Thanks in advance.

--
Please use the corrected version of the address below for replies.
Replies to the header address will be junked, as will mail from
various domains listed at www.scottsonline.org.uk
regards. Mike Scott Harlow Essex England.(unet -a-t- scottsonline.org.uk)

"Mike Scott" wrote in message
...
I'm making some avi's to be read on someone else's w*ws machine. It
suddenly occurred to me I haven't a clue what avi codecs they'll have
installed; I also know they won't know how to find out.

Does anyone have a list of w*ws (98!!) "standard" ones please?

Thanks in advance.

That's far enough back to have ASF never mind avi:¬) Safe bet would be
MPEG 1 unless your planning on streaming from a web page

In the faraway land of uk.rec.video.digital, Mike Scott
topper.scottsonline.org.uk said:
I'm making some avi's to be read on someone else's w*ws machine. It
suddenly occurred to me I haven't a clue what avi codecs they'll have
installed; I also know they won't know how to find out.

Does anyone have a list of w*ws (98!!) "standard" ones please?


They're pretty likely to have MPEG4 v2 codec (fourcc code MP42, file
MPG4C32.DLL) and the Intel Indeo codecs. I'd go for MP42, which is
pretty good (though not quite as good as the latest Xvid codecs et al).

To be certain they can play your videos I would suggest including the
codec with the video on the CDROM or whatever for them to install.
A good general purpose one is ffdshow, download the 2MB file
ffdshow-20041012.exe from
http://ffdshow.sourceforge.net/ and tell them to run it before playing
the video. It installs an MPEG4 Directshow filter which enables any
media player to play any MPEG4 file, be it MS-MPEG4, DivX, XviD, or
whatever. In fact it plays these files better than the official codecs,
especially on older machines. If you give them ffdshow, it gives you a
free hand to use pretty much any popular codec when making the video,
with XviD or DivX being the obvious choices.

Ffdshow can optionally cope with a large number of other video codecs
(MPEG, MJPEG, HufYUV, WMV, etc), does subtitles, and the download even
includes some optional audio codecs (though I would be wary of
installing them if you already have mp3, AC3 etc., as I believe they're
experimental and may be worse than what you already have installed).

Note: there are several generations of the ffdshow codec available, I
recommend the latest alpha version listed above (Oct 2004), it is stable
under Win98 and works on older pentium II / celeron processors, whereas
some of the older versions (including old so-called "stable" versions
which date from 2002) crashed under Win98.


--
__________________________________________________ ____

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the
victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
-- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
__________________________________________________ ____
Take a break at the Last Stop Cafe: http://www.xerez.demon.co.uk/
Reply-to address for email: mailreply AT xerez.demon.co.uk