MPEG-Codec???

[ckad79]

My friend recently downloaded a movie from the 'net and burned it to a disc for me. Well, I took it home to play it and my Windows Media Player (newest verison) does not recognize the format. The file itself is listed under .mpg and when you right click on it to get more information..it saids that it is a MPEG file. So then I tried it on a few other programs to try to get it to work like XingMPEG player, Virtual Dub and then Real Audio just to get an idea of what it might be. The weird part was.. when I tried it on Real Audio it said that it could not recognize the file and that it may not even be a MPEG file to begin with. So does this mean that someone may have taken what really was let's say an.. AVI file and list it, so that it looks to be a .MPG by way of the extension. Is there anyway for me to figure out what this file is..so I can find a codec of some sort. A few other sites have suggested that a file can be read in WordPad and you can make out a code, that way. Well, when I try that.. it pretty much tries to store it and then eventually crashes. The file is pretty big. The one file, took up the whole discs for the download when I first got it from my buddy.

Anouther.. question. My main goal is to open it up on Windows Media.. so I can save it as an .avi file. Then take that .avi file, and burn it to a disc with NERO so I can watch it in my DVD player. Now, is there a way I can just convert a file without having to open it up somewhere to see it? Will it still burn properly with NERO and show up on DVD player? I doubt so.. but in case I can't find a codec for this.. I need other options.

Thanks a lot if you can help me out,

Clay

[patrickm]

is it MPEG-2? any of these programs you mentioned don't open MPEG-2 natively. if you install an MPEG-2 codec, such as from the elecard player (free demo, http://www.elecard.com) then either that or media player should be able to open it. the programs should probably play it anyway regardless of its extension. but if it's a divx avi, you'd get an error about ms-mpeg4 codecs.

[ckad79]

Thank you for getting back with me. I just downloaded the program you suggestion and... it even that won't accept it. It's weird.. my friend had it and it worked find. He used some movie view that came with his brand new ATI video card. I wish I could download that program.. or find the guy who made this movie and figure out what he did...

Thanks...

PS: Is there anyway to locate the type of codec you need.. or are you merely guessing?