Problem playing certain FLV files on my computer - please help!!

[quanzaboy]

Hey Everyone!

First of all I'm pretty much a n00b when it comes to anything having to do with video editing/playing/converting etc.

I've used a plugin called PlayFLV in order to allow my WMP10 to recognize and play FLV files on my computer. In conjunction with that I also use ffdshow (rev 3097 - Oct. 8th 2009) in order to decode FLV video files.

This works great, and I can simply play FLV files right inside WMP10 by double clicking on them like any other video file (avi, mpg etc.).

However, there is a problem... on occasion I get FLV files which I cannot play inside WMP10. When I double click to open them I just get a message that WMP10 cannot recognize the format.

The only program I seem to be able to open these FLV files from is FLVPlayer, which I don't really like to use that much, and would prefer to be able to play ALL video files from WMP as I'm doing right now.

In order to try and find out what's so different about these certain "unplayable" FLV files I loaded them from FLVPlayer and clicked on the "Info" button, and low and behold, they all have some commonalities:

Video codec ID: avc1
Video codec name: H.264
Framerate: unknown
Video datarate: unknown

In the above example where the video codec ID is "avc1" and the codec name is "H.264", the video will not play only if it's an FLV file. I found that MP4 files which have exactly the same encoding play without any problems.

So clearly in this instance ffdshow is definitely capable of decoding the video codec if the container is MP4, so why on earth can't it also decode when the container is FLV?!

Video codec ID: 7
Video codec name: undefined
Framerate: 25 fps (for example)
Video datarate: 361.3 Kbps (for example)

In this example (and this is the most common occurrence), I get video codec ID as "7", and the video codec name is "undefined". These FLVs will only play with FLVPlayer and nowhere else.

So what exactly is this video codec who's ID is "7" and how can I play these files outside of FLVPlayer??


Just to contrast the above 2 examples, MOST of the flv files which I CAN PLAY are these:

Video codec ID: 4
Video codec name: On2 VP6
Framerate: 20 fps (for example)
Video datarate: 309.26 Kbps (for example)

This is like 99% of all of them!

*SOME* are also this:

Video codec ID: 2
Video codec name: Sorenson H.263
Framerate: 20 fps (for example)
Video datarate: 309.26 Kbps (for example)

So when it's "Sorenson H.263" it's also not a problem.


I've tried to search online for a solution last night, but couldn't quite find any solutions which are specific to my problem. Also I tried to completely uninstall and then re-install the latest rev of ffdshow, and that didn't seem to do anything!

If anyone can offer me any information about how to solve this problem I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks for taking the time to read everyone!

John

[poisondeathray]

You need a directshow splitter that accepts h.264/aac in flv

Install flv splitter for use in WMP11 or other directshow players (you also need an h.264 decoder, like ffdshow), or use another player like KMplayer , SMPlayer, VLC, or MPCHC

[quanzaboy]

Thanks a lot poisondeathray!!

I actually ended up uninstalling "PlayFLV", and installed the FLV Splitter instead, and now all FLV files play perfectly! :]

Since like I said I already was using ffdshow, that needed no re-installation or anything! Didn't even have to restart my computer, it started working immediately!!

Just one final question; After I install the FLV Splitter using "regsvr32 FLVSplitter.ax", do I still need to keep the FLVSplitter.ax file in the location from which I installed it, or can I now just delete it?

Thanks!