On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 6:24 PM, Barry <[email protected]> wrote:
> avi files from my camera, VOB, wmv. Not sure on how to check for installed
> video codecs. I seem to remember a package for microsoft codecs,do I need
> it??
The filename extension normally indicates what "container" the video
has, but doesn't tell you how the video & audio inside it are encoded
-- it's like seeing a "tgz" file -- you know that the contents are in
a compressed tar format, but you still don't know if it contains jpegs
or gifs or bmps ...
ffmpeg -i <movie> will tell you what's inside a file
$ ffmpeg -i Big_Buck_Bunny_1080p_surround_FrostWire.com.avi
...
Input #0, avi, from 'Big_Buck_Bunny_1080p_surround_FrostWire.com.avi':
Duration: 00:09:56.48, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 12455 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 1920x1080 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9],
24 tbr, 24 tbn, 24 tbc
Stream #0.1: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5.1, s16, 448 kb/s
So I can see that this file has video encoded with mpeg4, and an AC3
audion track.
However, if you are seeing this with a wide range of input files, this
is probably a red herring.
Most likely the problem is down to the video driver that X is using.
You will need to provide details of what video card you have (lspci)
and what driver you are using (lsmod perhaps). That's not my area of
specialty, sorry ... either wait for a more video-aware CLUG response,
or widen your search to nzlug's mailing list ...
-jim
