Page 1 of 1

Playing back .m2t files

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 9:54 pm
by Ken Berry
I received the following email from one of our users. In this case, it is not directly related to Video Studio, so the usual rule about Moderators not answering questions sent by email does not apply. However, it may be of interest to others, so I am posting it here.
G¡¦day Ken,

Quick dumb question for you.

Sometimes I just want to play a clip or several from windows explorer, to see how they look.

What software do you use to play m2t files, (straight from the camera) on your computer.

My Windows Media Player won¡¦t play them and WinDVD won¡¦t play them either

Ormond Williams MCPF®
In point of fact, I had never given this a thought before. By default, I have Nero ShowTime set as the player for m2t files (HDV files), so if I am outside Video Studio, when I click on such a file, ShowTime automatically opens and plays the video.

Given Ormond's question, though, I tried my other players. PowerDVD 8 plays them without problem. Interestingly enough, Windows Media Player returns a message saying it does not recognise the format. However, if you read the fine print, and swear that the video is from a trustworthy source, it will in fact play m2t, and did so just fine. That's WMP 11 by the way.

Corel's WinDVD 9 proved to be the only one which would not play m2t. It could certainly 'see' the files when I navigated to a folder containing them. But it would only play the audio, with a black screen... I would be interested to hear if anyone else has had a different experience with WinDVD.

One slight gloss on WMP: I have a PlayStation 3 in my home computer network, and the PS3 is connected via HDMI to my HDTV. The PS3 itself seems to be able to recognise and play just about any video format. But Of course you need a software player on your computer capable of sending it a signal via the network. For this arrangement, both Nero MediaHome and WMP can act as servers. When I choose ShowTime in the PS3 screen on my HDTV, it will list and play all my m2t files on the computer. WMP will not -- only when they are converted to high def mpeg-2 with the .mpg extension. In other words, you don't get the same 'small print' message in the PS3 you get when you are using WMP on the computer itself.

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 10:42 pm
by Ormond Williams
Thanks Ken.
I have Windows Media Player version 11.0.6000.5344, which plays only the audio part of the m2t files. The video codec it's using is 'Intervideo Video Decoder' and I suspect that could be the problem.

I could install Nero Showtime, but as I already have way too many programs installed on this machine, I would like to try to get WMP to work if possible.

What video codec is your WMP using???

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 2:29 am
by 2Dogs
I can play m2t clips using the very compact (minimalistic) freeware Media Player Classic, part of the Real Alternative freeware "suite". I also have the freeware ffdshow installed, along with the Haali media splitter. That seems to cover just about all the formats I've tried.

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 3:22 am
by Ken Berry
My version of WMP is 11.0.6001.7000 -- maybe that makes the difference...? I think mine uses the PowerDVD Cyberlink codec...

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 4:42 am
by Ormond Williams
My WMP won't update. It says I have the latest version, which is obviously untrue.
Looks like I will have to install one of the other programs.

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 11:05 pm
by Accolades
This is a very small program that will play most video files and a lot of other files.


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