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WMV and ASF?

Indrid ColdIndrid Cold Posts: 16,688 Skive's The Limit
in General Chat
I'm using Ubuntu (a linux distro, with a GNOME desktop). Whenever I download a .wmv file from the internet, if I double click on it I get a message that although the file has a wmv extension, the contents is of asf type. What's this about? Is it a bug in the OS, or are most wmv files out there actually asf with the wrong extension?

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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I haven't played with mulitmedia in linux for a long time, because it always sucked, but..

    WMV is obviously a propriority format from microsoft, and last I heard it wont work with true OSS. MPlayer has some less than legal codecs with it, so try that.

    Also, linuxquestions http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/ is the best place for technical help, not a forum for teenage chat that is thesite :P
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    i find the xine backend works flawlessly for me with multimedia, plus the xine player isnt half bad either once you work out how to use it!
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Gavman wrote:
    i find the xine backend works flawlessly for me with multimedia, plus the xine player isnt half bad either once you work out how to use it!

    Yeah Xine is very good these days, but after experimenting a bit, I decided to use my big tower as my windows/games/movie/mp3 box and the linux box for online shopping and programming.

    Even though windows media player has a million and one buttons that I never use, it still behaves as I expect it to. The usability of kaffeine and naoton etc is still lacking.
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    Indrid ColdIndrid Cold Posts: 16,688 Skive's The Limit
    I think you misunderstood... I can play the files. But if I don't change their extension to .asf, I get that "warning" message.

    I wasn't asking how to play the video, just why that happens: Is it a bug in the OS, or are most wmv files out there actually asf with the wrong extension?
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I think Microsoft started messing around with things when WMP9 or 10 came out. The codecs used on Linux are... erm... rather stolen from Microsoft. Well, reverse-engineered...

    Maybe upgrading to the latest version of FFmpeg will sort it?

    Proprietary codecs suck eggs. Find another source for your naked ladies ;).
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    Indrid ColdIndrid Cold Posts: 16,688 Skive's The Limit
    Click to see more wrote:
    Find another source for your naked ladies ;).
    ;)

    Since I can play them anyway, I'll stick with this. I was just curious if people name the files wmv when they're not.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Maybe there is a bad implementation in a program somewhere - where whatever is used to encode it, dishes out the wrong file extension?
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I have enver coem across this problem before and so would agree that its probably a software or codec issue rather than a file issue
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