I downloaded a large video file that won't play. GSpot says it's a 3gpp file. The person who uploaded the file said to use ffdshow to play it. ffdshow will NOT install. So I searched the net hoping to find a codec. Apparently none exist. I did find mention of a program called mpegable DS decoder. Unfortunately, all the links lead back to the developer's site, which no longer has the file online. I can't find any other site to download it from, at least not one with anything more current than 3 years ago, which doesn't mention 3gp at all. I've seen converters, but I don't want to spend several hours trying to convert it and dealing with all that that entails (especially as I've never encoded a single video in my life), I just want to watch the stupid thing! I've also seen mention of Videolan/VLC. That's another piece of "miracle" software that has never worked properly for me. I've tried it on two different systems and never once got it to play a video the way it was supposed (no picture, choppy picture, extremely distorted sound, crashes, etc). What do I use to watch this file with???
Well 3gp is a container, for playback it requires a splitter (such as haali's) and decoders for all contained streams (AMR, h.263, etc.). To be honest I can't really think of any dshow filters for AMR/h.263 other than ffdshow, but then I don't even know what streams are in the 3gp anyway.
Well, Gspot 2.5 just had this to say; File Type: 3GPP Media (.3GP) [MP4 compat.] Mime Type: video/mp4 I followed the advice of the poster and installed ffdshow (the version that worked) and Matroska Splitter, and now it plays. I'm a little unclear though on what each does. Matroska's installer makes it look like it duplicates some/much of the functionality of ffdshow. I just hope the two don't conflict on other things.
