I donwloaded your courses and Media Player keeps telling me that it doesn't have the proper codec, even though I've downloaded several different codec packages from CNet. Which codec does it use and where can I get it?
Thank you, in Advance for your time.
Ric

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Richard Replies:

We use the "WMV2" codec which is a standard Windows Media Player codec. I have heard from a small number of people who can't seem to get my videos to play using newer versions of WMP, which is odd. In that case, I recommend downloading and installing VLC Player which works just fine. It's a FREE open-source player that plays just about everything:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Plus, VLC will install the right codec on your system, and then WMP should work with my videos too. It's weird, I know, but Microsoft keeps playing around with the WMP codecs and messing everything up.

90% of my videos are also available in FLASH format in my online Theater, and I'm going to be standardizing on Flash video and axing Windows Media format in the future.

http://www.599cd.com/Theater

For those of you who don't know what a CODEC is, it's essentially a set of rules to COmpress and DECompress video and audio. When you package a video file up for distribution, it's compressed down into a smaller file that has to be UNcompressed to play. There are tons of different codecs available, and Microsoft keeps jerking me around, changing which codecs come with the "standard" version of Windows Media Player... which is why I'll be standardizing on FLASH in the near future (it doesn't have this problem!)