Monkeyless

I don’t know why this was as tough to figure out as it was, but here you go.

I was trying to watch an MPEG-4 file in the .mp4 container, which I guess is somehow different than all the MPEG-4 videos in AVI containers that haven’t been an issue (e.g., xvid videos). But Media Player Classic, the only video player I use, kept saying “Cannot render the file.” Googling that error for MPC mp4 files didn’t turn anything up.

I tried a newer version of ffdshow and made sure that the right codecs were enabled in it (basically, it should have worked as long as H.264 was enabled, but it wasn’t.)

The answer? Download a newer version of Media Player Classic. I guess there’s just something about the older version that can’t play mp4 files right. I was using 6.4.8.4, and after downloading 6.4.9.0, it all works perfectly.

Oddly enough, I found a page discussing 6.4.8.5 which claimed to add support for MP4 files, but someone posted there saying that didn’t make sense, since he was viewing MP4 videos without a problem in 6.4.8.4, the same version that wasn’t working for me.

I guess it’s all about some odd codec that he had installed that I didn’t which made it work? Even though I had the right codecs installed to handle H.264? I don’t know, it’s all weird black magic to me. Click on stuff until it starts working and then try not to break it later.