TalkingSoft.com Forums: Desparate Newb Doesn't Get It! - TalkingSoft.com Forums

Hi. I am totally ignorant and I just did an uninstall of players and codecs which I thought might be in conflict...realplayer(did not have the rpcleaner, used several regcleaners instead), quicktime player, winamp3, wmp7.1(wmp6.4 seems to still be here, don't know how I missed it) videolan, irfanview, indeo, dvix, whatever else I could find. My purpose was to have a fresh start. Now I'm kind of stuck as to what to do. I was thinking maybe klite with real and quick alternatives or try vlan again. I've already been at this for 2 days and have been reading stuff way over my head,I am now so confused like I hit a wall.

I have a PII350 with 256M ram running W98 first edition and have never been able to make multimedia all work well. Most of what I started with 8yr ago became dated and as I installed newer players things just quit working. I'm so frustrated, little kids can do this stuff and I am way out of any league here. I'll be happy to provide info I may have missed if someone could please just help a bit. Thank you.

If you want to keep it simple and prevent codec conflicts ... give FFDshow ashot. It decodes (and encodes) many video and audio types. I would also suggest that you load either xvid or divx as well, although ffdshow does handle them, some people think the video is better using those.
Then make sure you have GSpot, that way you can 1. check to see if your codecs working and installed properly, and 2. if you can't play it Gspot will help tell you why, also get Media Info. It adds itself to your right click menu so you can what codec a given file uses just by right clicking on it and choosing media info.
As for mpeg2, ffdshow is supposed to handle that, but if you want you could check out the moonlight-elecard mpeg codecs. If you find them under the two names seperately don't mind, moonlight and elecard are still basically the same.
For subs, ffdshow will handle.
If you need other codecs, check what you nee and then load just that. Keep it simple, most people add these huge codec packs, are not really sure of what they just loaded, then go and add new stuff haphazardly, creating conflicts. More is really not better in this case.
Oh, almost forgot, the real alt, and quick alt codecs. If you have quicktime and real loaded up. Remove them completely first, then install the alternatives. When the config for the quick alt comes up, don't check the download options, it'll dl the whole package if it get's the chance and mess you up. And yes do install the browser plugins from the alts, this way it'll work in your browser too.

That should get you going,

luc,

topcat

i got better performance on my old pc when i uninstalled ffdshow and installed only xvid, divx & ac3.

Thank you topcat139 and errorxp for your responses. I had already downloaded real and quick alt but have not yet installed. Now I could not find the r1pclean uninstall prog on real site, seems it comes with the player package unless I missed it. I like to think the various cleaners I use to get rid of old program files and reg entries did their job, but if not... how would I know? That is, is there something to look for on my hdd, or is there a particular symptom I would have if real alt was installed while there was some hidden realnetwork crap lurking some where? Cause it would really suck to have to dl and reinstall realplayer just to get the uninstaller so I can get rid of it again. Of course, whatever it takes.

Also, I uninstalled Windows media player 6.4, so except for the issue I mentioned here, I should be starting from absolute scratch? Now, I also have Ashampoo, GR8, QCD, Audacity, and Voyetra audiostation2, this last one has all of these mixers and wav and midi controls and came with the computer. My question I suppose is do these progs have codecs that need to go away too??

Sorry it took so long to get back to you, forum must be really busy, loads sooooo slow.
Looking forward to hearing from you, thanks again for yuor help.

Some things I found out, and another question:

ffdshow: sounds cool but cpuz does not indicate support for SSE, only MMX
divx 6: min sys requirements too high
divx free: min sys req not mentioned, non-googleware version not on dl page.
xvid: Nics v. Koepi? Still need divx?
G Spot v2.21: Very cool, shows lots of codecs still on my hdd, do I uninstall by hand, as I did those mentioned here- (forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/81570) ? Should I?

ffdshow is bad if you have less than a p3!!
koepi xvid seem faster for some ppl but i dont see the difference and xvid can decode divx 4 (and 5???)
youll need divx 6 for decode divx6 movie

xvid can play back some divx formats. so i guess you can live without it if you don't watch too many older movies.

Hello again.

I've installed real and quick alt, Koepis, mpc, gspot, still all the video I get is mpg.
Everything else "fails to render". And I haven't even started with the audio stuff yet.

Yahoo doesn't even reckognize mpc and demands wmp before it will play any media format!

I want to install media-info, but I need unicow, and I don't know where to put unicow where it will work.

I'm obviously making a mess of all this. Worse yet I'll be on the road all day tomorrow, and I have the feeling that this won't fix itself in my absense. I appreciate any further suggestions you can make. My time on the computer is usually pretty limited and i would sure hate to abandon this after all. Maybe there is some sort of step by step tutorial or something that could dumb this down for me a bit.

Sorry to become a pest. Thanks again.