How Do I play a MP4 File on CD in Vista?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jack B
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J

Jack B

Sometimes I find Vista extremely infuriating and this is one of those times.
I've got a golf training CD that came with a book, and according to the book
there are some videos to look at on the cd. They have .MP4 extensions.
When I double click one, I'm told that Windows doesn't know what program to
use to open it, so I select Windows Media Center from a list. Then I come
to the media center, but I can't find the CD or the files in the media
center. I can find tons of icons changing size and flashing as I pass the
cursor over them, and it's all very pretty and sounds good, I'm sure, but I
can't do what I want, which is just to take a look at one of the tracks on
the CD!!

So now, instead of seeing a quick clip and moving on to other tasks this
afternoon, I am beating my head against the wall, wondering why I paid $160
for this insanely screwed up OS.

So, please excuse the ranting, and can anyone tell me what I need to do to
play these video clips?

Thanks,

Jack
 
/Jack B/ said:
Sometimes I find Vista extremely infuriating and this is one of those times.
I've got a golf training CD that came with a book, and according to the book
there are some videos to look at on the cd. They have .MP4 extensions.
When I double click one, I'm told that Windows doesn't know what program to
use to open it, so I select Windows Media Center from a list. Then I come
to the media center, but I can't find the CD or the files in the media
center. I can find tons of icons changing size and flashing as I pass the
cursor over them, and it's all very pretty and sounds good, I'm sure, but I
can't do what I want, which is just to take a look at one of the tracks on
the CD!!

So now, instead of seeing a quick clip and moving on to other tasks this
afternoon, I am beating my head against the wall, wondering why I paid $160
for this insanely screwed up OS.

So, please excuse the ranting, and can anyone tell me what I need to do to
play these video clips?
Click to expand...

This may help, though it refers to older Media Players...
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/format/codecdownload.aspx

Alternatively, try Media Player Classic, an open source player available
for free. It plays most files types...
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303&package_id=84358
 
Thanks - that worked. That's the second time I've tried to play a video in
Vista and the second set of codecs I've had to download. It seems insane to
me that I've got to keep downloading stuff in order to see a video on my
Vista OS. I've got the Home Premium version that is supposed to provide
this great media center!

Thanks again,

Jack
 
I am with you on that. I can't get certain audio or video feeds from the
web that were no problem in XP (86 or 64). I am using ultimate, yikes.
 
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