Unknown Audio Codec with Xvid AVI

[samuraijack]

Hi All,
I got a movie from a friend and it was split into two parts. The first part plays fine. Its Xvid.avi with Fraunhafer Pro encoding for the audio. When I load the second part, it will play the movie on one machine in Windows Mplayer, but no sound. If I load it on another machine, It will play audio in winamp, but give the lovely screen of green. When I identify the audio source for the first one it shows up as Fraunhauffer MP3 Pro, but the second part shows an unknown format ( 2000). I think it might be as simple as the MP3 header being damaged.
Any suggestions on how I go about fixing this?

[samuraijack]

Answering my own post....

Found this really nice Xvid faq atwww.xvidmovies.com

4.3 No picture, I get no video when playing XviD movies
This error occurs when you try to watch a movie and the video player you are using is unable to find the needed video codec. You might be able to listen to the sound but no video is shown. Fortunately, there is an easy way to fix this problem. All AVI files contain a FOURCC code in the header of the file, which can be used to identify the video codec required to play the movie.

To find out which video codec you are missing you should download GSpot and open the movie you are having problems playing. The program will give you information about what codecs are needed to play the movie and if you have them installed on your computer. If you look under the video format section you will see information about the video stream. If you don't have a compatible video codec installed you should be able to use the FOURCC codec to find and download the needed video codec in the following list:

FOURCC Video codec
DIV3 DivX codec v3.11 alpha
DIV4

DivX codec v3.11 alpha
DIVX DivX codec v5.2
DX50

DivX codec v5.2
XVID

XviD codec v1.0.1
MP43

SMR codec

Please note that there doesn't exist any video codec that uses the FOURCC code 0. If you've downloaded a movie with the FOURCC code 0 it's a fake movie file and you won't be able to watch it. To avoid fake movies using KaZaA you can use a program called sig2dat. Then you simply goto a site such as ShareTheFiles.com and lookup the movie you want to download. All the files have been verified and should work, so when you follow the sig2dat link your KaZaA will automatically try to find and download the movie.


4.4 No sound, I get no audio when playing XviD movies
First of all, you need to figure out if the problem is with the movie you are trying to play or your system configuration. You can do this by trying to play an MP3 or another movie and see if the sound works. If it does you should keep on reading for more information how to fix the problem. Otherwise you have to figure out what's wrong with your system configuration.

It's important to understand that video and audio are two separate things, which when combined make up movies. A movie consists of a video stream for the picture and an audio stream for the sound. The XviD codec is what makes it possible to decode the video stream, but it has nothing to do with decoding the audio stream. If the sound in a movie isn't working you have to find out which audio codec is missing and install it.

To find out which audio codec you are missing you should download GSpot and open the movie you are having problems playing. The program will give you information about what codecs are needed to play the movie and if you have them installed on your computer. If you look under the audio format section you will see information about the audio stream. If you don't have a compatible audio codec installed you should be able to use the codec name to find and download the needed audio codec in the following list:

Compression Audio codec
MPEG Layer-3 Codec MP3 codec
Unknown (tag 55) MP3 codec
Unknown (tag 85)

MP3 codec
DivX Audio Compressor DivX audio
Unknown (tag 161) DivX audio
Unknown (tag 353)

DivX audio
AC3 Codec AC3 codec
Unknown (tag 2000) AC3 codec
Unknown (tag 8192)

AC3 codec
Ogg Vorbis Codec OGG codec
Unknown (tag 674F) OGG codec
Unknown (tag 26447)

OGG codec

Please note that the new DivX codec doesn't include support for the DivX Audio format, so you won't be able to watch these movies with sound simply using the new DivX codec. The only way to watch these movies with sound is either using the original DivX codec v3.11 alpha, or by installing the DivX audio decompressor separately.

Both instances work very well now... Thanks for the views if nothing else!

Hope this helps somebody...