Playing an unsupported file

If vlc cant open it you have found something truly odd
- The file extension is exe, am I doing something wrong?
  
  Have you tried installing it as system admin? Make sure to check all boxes and click next as well.
  
  Boss? Is that you?
  
  It’s a scam don’t follow the instructions.
  If you can’t find a different release there aren’t any legnimate releases of that title.
  
  Yes. That's terribly unsafe of you. Use a Mac and only open up video files with a .app file extension, silly!
- I honestly can't remember the last time I couldn't open a video file.
  
  Happened to me a few months ago. Had a ticket for our District Attorney office, trying to playback a security camera footage from a parking lot or something. It would open, but, the person that was supposed to be seen would show up for a few frames and glitch out.
  Turns out the cam system it came from uses some very proprietary codec. So the footage was effectively useless without their special sauce player/codec
  
  I can! Happened all the time 20 years ago. Since then, no.
  
  [deleted]
  
  I'm working in live video and there's a lot of proprietary codecs out there that vlc doesn't play by default. Most of those are lossless/very high bitrate lossy formats designed to be encoded and decoded quickly for things like instant replays, so not something the average consumer would get their hands on.
  
  My smart tv refuses to work with .mkv so it happens regularly for me.
- All my homies use mpv
  
  MPV gang rize up!
- I always use VLC so I thought the meme was that it was one of those fake "codec not supported, go to this sketchy website" videos
- Yeah, if VLC can't do it, I'd bet my money nothing can
- I've only had this problem playing the video on TV directly. Like smart TV. Can I put VLC on there?
  I use jellyfin to do transcoding, but very occasionally it exhibits issues still.
  
  Something I don't see a lot of people do but totally should is get a really long HDMI cable and snake it around the room. You can then hook up a laptop or hell even your desktop directly to the TV. Think my cable is around 20 feet and I got it off Amazon for dirt cheap. Works wonders when I want to watch something on Plex (a lot of smart TV's have trouble with Plex)
  
  If it's Android tv then yes, there is a VLC version for that.
- lol indeed. Love VLC on my AppleTV. Plays stuff the native app from my NAS won’t play.
- I recently downloaded some YouTube videos that my dad wanted to play through USB with his Android based projector, as it doesn't have the PlayStore and the videos didn't want to play (and I knew they worked fine on my mac) I went quickly to its store just to find out VLC wasn't there, and I didn't have time to sideload stuff (I didn't even know if it was possible), hopefully there was FX File Explorer and that one comes with a video player which was able to save the day.
- I remember a phase in my childhood where I could only get Realplayer to open some series of anime that I was into at the time that I had downloaded.
- Beat me to it. I haven’t had an unsupported file error in the decade I’ve been using VLC. Maybe one time I had to download something to support a rare file type
- VLC doesn't play 4k files properly though
  Potplayer ftw

Uninstall that shit and use VLC
- And if you want to play on a TV that doesn't support the format, convert it with FFMpeg.
  
  I've had good experience using mkvtoolnix to mux video into an mkv with subtitles included. Not sure if mkv support is widespread, but as janky as the TV was with other formats, mkv worked great every time.
- MPC-HC also a very good choice
  
  Installing MPC-HC during K-Lite Code pack as my primary media player has taken place of VLC for me this last year. I have been using VLC as music player only with some Winamp-like no-viewport UI lately.
- this is the correct answer
- VLC could play a polaroid image of the Voyager records.
- VLC works most of the time. That said some videos VLC can't seem to decode correctly - I never get VLC complaining about unsupported file formats, but I do get weird artifacts and glitched rendering when I try to play certain ones.
  It's then that I usually try MPV or MPlayer. One of those will usually play the video correctly.

What troglodyte doesn't use VLC nowadays?
- mpv enjoyers
  
  Am I in the wrong for using mpc-hc?
- People with automated Sonarr/Plex setups probably. Haven't had to use VLC since like 2009
  
  Exactly, but better use jellyfin.
- mpv is more effective. Worse user interface though
- not-troglodites, vlc does weird stuff.

mpv my beloved
- VLC-heads in this thread are a decade behind
  
  We're streets ahead.

VLC

where the fuck are u getting ur movies??? I've only ever seen mp4 and mkv, all of which even windows media player handles I think
- It's an ".avi.exe".
  
  yeah idk if vlc does .exe
  
  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
- Mp4 and mkv are container formats. Your comment is somewhat equivalent to "where are you guys getting text files that can't be displayed, I've only ever seen zip files".
  The codec in the container is what needs to be played, and can fail to render correctly.

And then you have mpv that will play anything ever, even a .txt with "interesting movie" written in it
- Any Player will not be able to decode some files if they are downloaded in pieces and not even the header data is complete.
  
  It depends, there are decent chances you'll get the video to play from the next I frame onwards.

me: opens vlc. play it anyway, idc

VLC to the rescue!

lmfao who has this problem, your great grandma?
tf is wrong witchoo boi

This reminded me of having to install a codec pack like klite or cccp as one of the first things on a fresh install. I'm glad that isn't a thing anymore.
- Comments like this reminded me of how dark of a world it used to be.
- I still install klite out of habit.

VLC, MPV

I use the SMplayer, it plays and streams almost everything (Mplayer engine, apart also works with mpv).

Me: cycling through every media players I have installed until I get one that plays the video properly.
VLC, MPV, MPlayer, Parole, etc

Sounds a bit small for a movie

Eh, my internet is 1gbps, I can just download something else
- the people you are downloading from usually don't have such speed tho
  
  Doesn't matter when you download off of dozens at once. This is what torrents do.
  
  That's why torrenting allows you to download different parts of the file from multiple people at the same time.
  
  I have a 4gbit line, and while I usually use Usenet to download a lot of torrents still easily reach 2-3gbit up/down.

Am I too 1Gb/s fiber connected to understand that?

Torrenting in a nutshell! It can give out same error sometimes for incomplete file depending on the player used.

Console medianfo your.file please.

No big deal, just download the codices.

Why is it a big deal? 2.5Gb takes like 20-30 seconds to download
- Bold of you to assume internet access is great everywhere
- I forget that some people have crazy fast internet. Mine downloads 2.5gb in like 20 minutes.
- With speeds like that why haven't you downloaded a functioning brain yet?
- 2.5 GB in 30 seconds is 83 MB/s.
  
  Or about 660 Mb/s, which is how we typically see download speeds written.

Average Windows user.
BTW, IEC units are superior and accepted unlike the SI units, so the correct usage is "2.5 GiB".
- I spent $20 on this video player but it doesn't support my format! Does anyone know if the $50 pro version works? /s
  
  When user says "Linux is too complicated"
  
  The FOSS to the rescue.
  
  Yeah, its called vlc. You can download it only if you pay 50$ in "Donate" section
  -s
- gib peac
  stfu
  
  What's "gib peac"?
- I have probably triggered all the Windows users.
  They hated him, because he was telling the truth.