Joe Robson has released “The Newbie Club Insider” July 3, issue 283. Read Joe Robson’s latest article titled “Can’t View Your Movies?”.


Joe Robson has released “The Newbie Club Insider” July 3, issue 283.

Article

Joe Robson’s latest article is reprinted here.

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Can’t View Your Movies?

Ever loaded a movie CD into you PC or laptop and all you got was a green screen? Then loaded a second CD and got the same result?

What’s going on here?

One word sums it up ….

Codecs.

All you needed were the codecs for these movies. They were not broken; they were just coded in a ‘foreign’ language to your media player. The codecs were the dictionary that your laptop had to use to translate the absurd computer language to the nice scenes of the movies.

Every video, audio, picture or even word document files are coded in a different way. In the case of big data entries like movies, the computer has to use different algorithms to compress the data so that the size does not exceed the standard limits.

We see this compression in PDF files (Acrobat Reader), in MP3 files (WinAMP), in MPEG files (movies), in each and every data storage file that you can imagine. While the compression is being done, the programs use some kind of a dictionary. Without these ‘dictionaries’ (codecs in the case of video and audio files) the code would seem as meaningless to the player or the viewer as it is to you. So you have to install certain codecs to be able to use certain files.

Some codecs replace the repetitive symbols over the file, some codecs changes the aspect ratio of the movie; some of them decrease the quality of the picture and yet, all of them turn gigabytes of data into fair size that can fit into a CD or a DVD.

As the user demands increases, codecs are multiplying in a logarithmic scale. There are several codecs that are musts for movie fans, however. You should install most of these if you don’t want to be disappointed.

1. MPEG4 – It is the default codec already included in WMP. 2. DIVX – A series of sound and display codex which come with shareware DIVX player. 3. XVID – Relatively new, one of the most used video codecs. 4. AC3 – Most common sound codec. 5. Intel Indeo – Rather useful series of codec which a new version pops out everyday.

Overall the way movies are encoded is changing day by day. Everyday we see a new aspect ratio. Everyday we encounter a new codec. To many, it would seem that it’s getting harder and harder to watch movies.

So what else in new in the world of computers?

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Joe Robson owns The Newbie Club. His blockbuster course ‘First Website Builder’, at http://www.newbieclub.com shows how to build, write, design, automate, backup, promote and publish your first Website with free software. It’s used by thousands of Newbies in 107 countries around the world

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Contents

The contents of the Newsletter are:

1. Joe’s Ramblings

2. Article ….. “Wikis, Vlogs and Pods – Huh”

3. Article ……”Can’t View Your Movies?”

4. Tutorial …. “How To Customize Your Toolbars”

5. Tutorial …. “Call In The Clean-Up Brigade”

6. Joe’s Pause For Thought

7. Time For A Laff

8. Complimentary Newbie Club Courses and eBooks.

9. Your Subscription Details.

Link

Go to The Newbie Club to subscribe to the newsletter.

*IMNewswatch would like to thank Joe Robson for granting exclusive permission to reprint this latest article.

 

 

 

 

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