Digital Home Thoughts: MediaInfo: It's Like "Dispel Magic" for Video Files

"Possibly the biggest frustration in watching digital video is getting the files to work. Invariably, you download something and your computer doesn't have the necessary codec to play it back. GSpot has long been a favorite solution for identifying issues with AVI files, but it doesn't include any way to resolve whatever the issue might be. MediaInfo ups the ante by providing information about virtually any video file type you throw at it and goes the distance in linking off to a related site where you can download what you need to playback a file. For instance, if you download an OGM video file, MediaInfo shows both the video codec used and the audio codec used, with links to the appropriate site for downloading each."



Bonus points for any D&D geeks that got that subject line. ;-) This looks like a useful tool, though I wish it didn't have to be installed and could be run as an EXE. I'm become a huge fan of programs that don't need to be installed and can be run off a USB flash drive for instance. Keeping things simple and clean is vital with Windows XP's tendency to bog down the more you install software.