AboutJeff Greenberg Expertise I can answer questions about Final Cut, Avid, DV cameras + editing, Hi-def, production, filmmaking, DVD creation and special effects.
Please do not ask me questions about your desktop, NOR your windows machine, nor ANYTHING to do with copyright infringement.
Experience I'm a film editor and certified trainer for about ten different applications.
Publications videography
Education/Credentials BA, Penn State university in film.
Question QUESTION: Hi Jeff,
I am a AllExpert on MG, Triumph & Jaguar and I am trying to learn video editing. I have Ulead video studio 10 and have made some home video clips "Home stuff" and have put a clip on CD and sent it to my brother. However, he gets a pop up on his PC saying he does not have the correct "Codec"
I have run into this other times and have not been able to get a handle on "Codecs"
My question is, Is there a way to tell what Codec is associated to a video clip and is there a place I can just download specific Codecs and send the appropriate codec with a video clip? Or is that not how it works?
ANSWER: Howard,
Good connecting with you.
The question I have for you is "WHAT did you send to your brother on the CD?"
Bascially.
When video editing, you choose a COpressor/DECompressor that is optimized for editing; Usually this is the same format as the camera captures as digital informaiton.
DV (miniDV, DVCpro25, DVCAM) are all the same data format that all DV cameras use.
So, if you shoot that, it's best to edit with that codec. Roughly 5 mins of DV video requires 1 Gig of storage space.
But when you distribute your video, it's possible to compress the video further, making it smaller (and in some cases idea for transmission over the Internet.)
This "Distribution" codecs, like MPEG-2 (DVD), WMV, and h.264 (a flavor of MPEG-4) are all very heavily compressed, making the files smaller.
It sounds like you sent your brother a piece of video that might have been QuickTime, AVI or WMV and he didn't have the appropriate codec to play it back.
Let me know how much any of that helps - and we'll go from there; either finding what codec he needs, or finding a different codec that he'll see easier.
Just be warned - I don't have Ulead nor a PC, which means that I won't have direct experience with your specific tools (that doesn't mean I don't know PCs or that I can't read some of the Ulead manual.) Just like there are great similarities (and differences!) between the three types of cars you're an expert on...similar things exist here; where the general principles and workflow remain the same regardless of the tools.
Best,
Jeff G
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: Hi Jeff,
The video clip was an .AVI file. This AVI clip will play in my Windows Media Player and in my VLC Media Player but will not open in my Ulead Video 10 editor. Even though I have opened other AVI files in my editor. And it would not open in my brother's Windows Media Player and he got a "Pop Up" window saying that he did not have the correct "Codec" to play the video.
I can not find anything in my editor that uses the terms "COpressor nor DECompressor"
This clip was made with someone else's camera. My camcorder clips are in .MOV files and my editor will open them and I can convert ("render" as it refers to it) into 21 different formats, some of which you mention like MPEG-2, WMV and MPEG-4 etc.
I have not been able to understand how to determine what Codec is used to view a video. (If that is what a Codec does) If a Codec is a file on my PC that allows my media player to open a video clip and it is missing from my brother's PC, how can I determine which Codec is required and where can I get the Codecs? If that is how it works I will just send a bunch of Codecs along with a video clip and have my brother just install all the Codecs in his PC. (If that is how it works)
Howard
Answer Howard,
Whoops, I didn't mean to write this much.
To some degree, .mov (QuickTime), and .AVI are 'containers' that can hold different flavors of video files. The codec is the 'flavor' of the video, if you will. QuickTime is (by far) the most flexible of these formats.
It's sort of like (but not the same) as the idea that Microsoft Word can be a .doc, .docx, .rtf, or .txt file. They're all word processing formats that contain text.
Some codecs only ship with editing products (remember the idea of editing codecs vs. distribution codecs?) Some codecs require updated versions of software (like QuickTime.)
Often we pick a distribution format like .wmv, .mpg, or .mp4 (amongst others) so others have minimal problems watching our videos. The distribution and playback is a constant struggle with others, as you're never 100% sure what is installed on their system. One of the reasons that the Flash format has become very popular for video (like youtube) is that nearly 95% of people have the flash plugin for their browser (which is installed by default), even though the quality might not be as good as other formats.
I did a quick search of Uleads site, and found an example where they mention that they sell and activate specific codecs <http://www.ulead.com/tech/faq/activation_faq.htm#6> I don't know the specifics of how Ulead handles their software distributuion.
It sounds like you're talking about two video files - the one you gave your brother and a second one (that you're mentioning in the reply) that came from someone's camera.
You can open the file in QuickTime (where you'll get a white screen signifying you don't have the correct codec) and 'Get Info" where it should tell you the codec that the file was compressed with.
Here is a shareware PC program that does a similar thing:
<http://www.kcsoftwares.com/?vtb>
Here is a so-so database of codecs <http://www.codecsdb.com/>
Personally I prefer wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_codecs>
The clip that was made with 'someone else's camera' is probably one of only four or five formats - I'm going to guess it's an AVCHD file, have you tried VLC player with it? Make sure you have the very latest VLC player.
The issue of why your media player doesn't just 'download' a specific codec comes down to two factors: software and licensing.
Software: depending what software and the specific version, your system may not be able to download an appropriate codec. Microsoft does not retain a library of ALL of the codecs, just the ones they choose to distribute.
Licensing. Certain codecs, MPEG-2 for example, require licensing fees to be paid; often, older windows systems required the purchase of DVD software to play back an MPEG-2
Again, try QuickTime or the shareware program from kcsoftwares to determine the codec. Once determined it doesn't mean you can easily get the file. I'm going to also guess, that the camera your friend bought, also included a drivers disk which also happened to install a codec on his computer making it possible for playback.
Please note, I mentioned playback, not editing - strange as it sounds, just because windows can see the file, ULEAD may not be able to; it's a handling issue - they may not have designed their software to work with that specific codec.
As I mentioned, there are some camera codecs and some distribution codecs. To make things ugly, some camera manufacturers utilize a distribution codec for their hard drive based cameras (because of the phenomenal compression) which requires a conversion before the file gets to some editing systems.
MPEG Streamclip <squared5.com> is one program that does these conversions.
Please feel free to write back with any sort of followups.
