Hi Folks, I'd be most grateful for help with the foloowing puzzle.
Background: I VHS-taped an item from yesterday evening's BBC1 "Look East", since it is of interest to people I know. I then copied this onto a "scratch" DVD, to have it readable on my Debian laptop (OK, I know it can probably be done with a cable, but I'm not up to that).
I wanted to put it up on my Zen web-site so that others can view it from there (and they will mostly be using WIndows). So I first created an AVI file usingmencoder as follows (following an example in 'man mplayer'):
mencoder dvd://1 \ -o denvermilllookeast2010.01.05.avi \ -oac copy \ -ovc lavc \ -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4
The resulting .avi file plays fine using totem. I then ftp'd it to my website, and tried playing it from there using IE on Windows Vista. It failed, saying a codec was missing. However, the file on the website still plays fine on Debian with totem.
So I then created a WMV file using "wmv2" format with:
mencoder dvd://1 \ -o Denver.wmv \ -oac copy \ -ovc lavc \ -lavcopts vcodec=wmv2
Then I uploaded this one as well. Once again, this played fine in totem both from the file on the Debian laptop and from the copy on the web-site.
This time, when I try IE from Vista on the web-site copy, I get the video OK, but no sound.
So I'm wondering what the problem is, and how to solve it!
In the past, I've had no problems with playing AVI files created by my digital camera using IE (video and sound both OK), though I haven't tried WMV before. So presumably there's some mysterious mismatch between the AVI created by mencoder as above, and AVI as Windows MediaPlayer expects to see it; ditto with WMV.
The files in question can be found at
http://www.zen89632.zen.co.uk/DenverMill
AVI: denvermilllookeast2010.01.05.avi WMV: Denver.wmv
and an example of a working AVI (both in totem and IE) at
http://www.zen89632.zen.co.uk/Earith/Earith_Crab_2009.10.25.avi
As well as the video, there is background noise from the water falling over the sluice, and from passing traffic, which comes through quite clearly both in totem and in IE.
For anyone interested: this is probably a Mitten Crab which has found its way some 30 miles upstream from the sea, spotted by me when I was strolling over the bridge above the sluice-gate on the Old Bedford River at Earith, in the shallow water above the concrete sill below the sluice-gate. A still photo is at
http://www.zen89632.zen.co.uk/Earith/Earith_Crab_2009.10.25cropped.jpg
The location of the photo is marked "A" on:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=52.353953,0.038109&... daddr=&hl=en&geocode=&mra=mi&mrsp=0&sz=15&sll=52.353901,0.038023& sspn=0.011586,0.034719&ie=UTF8&z=15
[equivalent: http://tinyurl.com/yb57epr ]
Any comments on the problem would be most welcome! With thanks, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 06-Jan-10 Time: 21:38:51 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------