Playing FLV files with WMP11

My daughter has just purchased a laptop with Vista and I am setting it up
for her. She has a large collection of flash video files that she has been
playing using WMP11 on my XP-SP2 box for a while now. They do not play on
her laptop.
She has been downloading the .flv files, changing the extension to .wmv and
they play.
I have not loaded any plug ins for WMP and none are listed. I have the
Flash player installed in my browser, as does the laptop, along with Java,
Shockwave, Quicktime. I have a RealPlayer installed, the laptop does not.
Both have Nero 7.5 installed.
I just downloaded and installed FFDShow. No change. (Am I supposed to import
codecs? How?)
My questions are:
Step by step on how to load codecs so WMP will play all file formats,
particularly FLV.
Why can my WMP play flvs - where did the codec come from - how can I find
it?
How can I add the codecs from FFDShow to WMP? Others on the web say this
works.
I know I am missing some important piece to the puzzle here - too
inexperienced with codecs and video. I am not inexperienced with computers,
or windows, or rooting around in the registry - (experienced enough to know
not to mess with it unless I know what I'm doing).
Any help or links would be greatly appreciated.

On Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:12:33 -0400, "TVeblen" <killtherobots@hal.net>
wrote:

>My daughter has just purchased a laptop with Vista and I am setting it up
>for her. She has a large collection of flash video files that she has been
>playing using WMP11 on my XP-SP2 box for a while now. They do not play on
>her laptop.
>She has been downloading the .flv files, changing the extension to .wmv and
>they play.
> I have not loaded any plug ins for WMP and none are listed. I have the
>Flash player installed in my browser, as does the laptop, along with Java,
>Shockwave, Quicktime. I have a RealPlayer installed, the laptop does not.
>Both have Nero 7.5 installed.
>I just downloaded and installed FFDShow. No change. (Am I supposed to import
>codecs? How?)
>My questions are:
>Step by step on how to load codecs so WMP will play all file formats,
>particularly FLV.
>Why can my WMP play flvs - where did the codec come from - how can I find
>it?
>How can I add the codecs from FFDShow to WMP? Others on the web say this
>works.


FFDShow *may* display some FLV content, but you have to explicitly
check the box in the FFDShow config for FLV7/8 playback support.

There's a confis page for those, typically it would be in WMP under
the DVD settings tab in Tools -> Options (or More Options, in WMP11)

Flash video may contain H263 video, or in Flash 8 it could be On2 VP6
video codec. More recently it can also contain H264 video content.

So at least all of those would be needed. You may also need a splitter
which extracts the raw video encoded within the FLV container. Haali
media splitter can do that for some formats suck as Matroska (MKV) but
I haven't looked at it recently to see if it can work with FLV.


HTH
Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2008
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs

Hey, thanks for the info Neil. Every bit helps. I'm taking a crash course in
video codecs here.
My real curiosity is what program was installed on my computer that may have
installed the codecs that WMP is using to play these FLVs my daughter has. I
know I never loaded anything, and she says she hasn't (she has no reason to
lie about that), but something was changed. My other XP desktop box will not
play these files either. Very strange indeed.
One note: in my Drivers32 key I have one data file that is different between
these two boxes: sl_anet.acm. Could that be the "magic" driver?

On Sun, 3 Aug 2008 19:35:59 -0400, "TVeblen" <killtherobots@hal.net>
wrote:

>>>Both have Nero 7.5 installed.
>>>I just downloaded and installed FFDShow. No change. (Am I supposed to
>>>Why can my WMP play flvs - where did the codec come from - how can I find
>>>How can I add the codecs from FFDShow to WMP? Others on the web say this
>>>works.

>> FFDShow *may* display some FLV content, but you have to explicitly
>> check the box in the FFDShow config for FLV7/8 playback support.

>My real curiosity is what program was installed on my computer that may have
>installed the codecs that WMP is using to play these FLVs my daughter has. I


Any one of a wide range of audio/video processing software can add
those, including stuff you might not think of like CD/DVD burning and
more likely video editing stuff came from Nero so that could be one
source.


>know I never loaded anything, and she says she hasn't (she has no reason to
>lie about that), but something was changed. My other XP desktop box will not
>play these files either. Very strange indeed.
>One note: in my Drivers32 key I have one data file that is different between
>these two boxes: sl_anet.acm. Could that be the "magic" driver?


No, that's an old style audio decoder, I think for phone quality audio

If you have Real Player 11, that can natively play most flash video
formats, which saves a lot of mucking about with DirectShow decoders.


If you *must* use media player, there's an FLV file splitter listed at
the Zoom Player site http://www.inmatrix.com/zplayer/formats/flv.shtml
which extracts the video content from the FLV container.

As mentioned on that page and in your previous post, FFDShow needs to
be told to handle FLV1 file content. Since you've got it installed :

In media player go to Now Playing, click the small dropdown menu and
choose More Options -> DVD -> Advanced...

Now click FFDShow's "Codecs" title on the left hand side of the popup.
Check that FLV1, VP3 and VP6 are specifically not disabled (libavcodec
is fine) which should get you that playback when you OK out of that
screen.

HTH
Cheers - Neil

------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2008
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs

Hey Neil. That's some great info. Very Helpful.
I think the best thing for her will be to load the native player - then
she's all set and I'm off the hook.
But I can't help playing with these things, so I will give it a go on my
other machine the next chance I get.
Thanks Again.

[pepito]

In order to play FLV files with WMP11 you must perform the following steps:

- Install a FLV splitter (find the one by Gabest's in http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli2/files/)

- Install the necessary audio and video codecs (for youtube videos you can decode H.264 video with ffdshow and AAC audio with CoreAAC).

- With GSpot make sure that the merits of the FLV Splitter, ffdshow and CoreAAC are set so that they are the preferred ones for the corresponding media types. Check that ffdshow is configured to decode H.264 streams

- And now the magic! In the control panel associate ".flv" extension to Windows Media Player. Then you will be able to play your flash videos with WMP11. The funny thing is that you can change the ".flv" association to another player and WMP11 will still be able to play flash videos.

P.S: I have tried this trick for ".vob" videos, but to no avail. WMP11 will refuse to open them because "it cannot jump to the specified location". There seems to be another problem here.

I hope it helps