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Old 09-23-2013, 09:35 AM
 
3,279 posts, read 5,297,314 times
Reputation: 6149

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A friend of mine has a Coby video player that will only play avi formatted video files, absolutely nothing else. (What a pain!) He has a DVD he wants converted to where it will play on it.

Using Handbrake, I managed to create .mp4 and .m4v files (and DVD files) and they all work fine, but I am having the absolute time of my LIFE trying to find free software that will convert the mp4 files or the DVD files to avi. It's so frustrating, I'm this close to just buying my friend another video player altogether. I have been searching for HOURS (and I mean HOURS) trying all different sorts of searches & programs and I absolutely CANNOT find ANYTHING that will handle this seemingly easy task.

Ugh.

LRH

 
Old 09-23-2013, 09:46 AM
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Location: Ohio
17,107 posts, read 38,008,209 times
Reputation: 14446
There are royalties associated with manipulating some video file formats in software. For every copy of the software distributed, royalties have to be paid. That's why Handbrake is distributed from France, because the government there doesn't recognize these royalty agreements.

The type of application you need is called "video transcoding" software. Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of the options, many of which are not free.

List of video transcoding software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Old 09-23-2013, 10:29 AM
 
41,815 posts, read 50,868,443 times
Reputation: 17863
AVI is not a format, it's a container file that can contain many types of video. You need to know what codec it accepts, it's probably DIVX.

Video tools/software and downloads - VideoHelp.com
 
Old 09-23-2013, 07:21 PM
 
Location: Wicker Park, Chicago
4,789 posts, read 14,714,652 times
Reputation: 1966
I think this might work; I have the X5 version.

Video-editing software
 
Old 09-24-2013, 07:31 PM
 
Location: SCW, AZ
8,263 posts, read 13,350,140 times
Reputation: 7910
When I tried a short while back, I liked the free Any Video Converter.
Another good one is SoThink Free Video Converter.
 
Old 09-25-2013, 08:32 AM
 
3,279 posts, read 5,297,314 times
Reputation: 6149
Update: I have managed to convert the file to AVI, and to different formats (DivX, MPEG4, XviD), the latter 2 of which the support page says is what the player supports.

This stupid thing STILL won't play the files. It absolutely refuses to.

I think I'm going to tell the guy "buy a player that actually WORKS." My computer, my phone, and my tablets all have played all of the files just fine, but not his "ghetto Sony."

A side rant--why can't they just do one single file format & be done with it? Even audio files don't have this many variations--you do have .wma and .aac and others as well as .mp3, but for the most part .mp3 is what you see 95% of the time. Why do video files have to have so stinking many variations? They ought to have maybe 3--MPEG4, H264, and FLV. That's it. There's no need for 932,091,365 types of video files & these codec/format compatibility headaches.

LRH
 
Old 09-26-2013, 04:37 AM
 
41,815 posts, read 50,868,443 times
Reputation: 17863
Quote:
Originally Posted by larrytxeast View Post
This stupid thing STILL won't play the files. It absolutely refuses to.
You probably have some other issue going on there like a resolution the player doesn't support. If you want to insure it plays author a DVD. DVD (not a DVD disc itself) is a standard. There is a specific range of bitrates, resolutions, video format, audio format and a specific structure the disc has to have. A DVD player that displays the DVD logo has to be able to play those discs. If you author a DVD it should play on any DVD player with one small exception, that being some players won't accept some burnable media e.g. +R, -R etc. The issue there is not the content but the physical disc, it will never work. You can look up disc compatibility here but most modern players should play any disc.



When you get into other formats like Divx or features like viewing images there is no standard.....

As far as the different formats they have evolved for different reasons, Divx was very popular 10 years ago and the most common way they were distributed with file sharing. Good quality and small file size. It's been eclipsed by other codecs.
 
Old 10-09-2013, 10:04 AM
 
70 posts, read 97,531 times
Reputation: 46
Quote:
Originally Posted by shyguylh View Post
A friend of mine has a Coby video player that will only play avi formatted video files, absolutely nothing else. (What a pain!) He has a DVD he wants converted to where it will play on it.

Using Handbrake, I managed to create .mp4 and .m4v files (and DVD files) and they all work fine, but I am having the absolute time of my LIFE trying to find free software that will convert the mp4 files or the DVD files to avi. It's so frustrating, I'm this close to just buying my friend another video player altogether. I have been searching for HOURS (and I mean HOURS) trying all different sorts of searches & programs and I absolutely CANNOT find ANYTHING that will handle this seemingly easy task.

Ugh.

LRH
dont know about converting you will have to pay for it and in that case Xilisoft is the best. and MPC Star can play all your videos (Any type of video format) and its FREE.
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