11.0 mega pixel digital video camera jazz dv171

Question

i just got this and right on the box it does say video recording. ok i take the video shot and i can replay everything i did right on the camera.

NOW when i go to put the videos and put them on my computer the video isnt a video its audio

WTF am i doing wrong!!!! the mode is on camera. and it shows me the video back but when i plug in the thing on the computer it shows up as audio and plays in my media player

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Answer 1

Here's the deal: your camera is recording video in some variation of MPEG-4 Simple or Advanced Simple profile. That's a native format to the camera, but seems to be unknown to your computer. So when you attempt to play the video back on the computer, it doesn't understand the video portions, but has no problem with the audio, so you only hear the audio, which is recorded in MP3.

They have virtually no information about this camera online... unfortunately common with these cheap Chinese cameras. I'm guessing it records something similar to DivX, which is based on AVI and MPEG-4.

Video formats like MPEG-4 are just video formats... they have no computer-like structure to them, they don't worry about audio, etc. But on a computer, you want both of these, so there are "wrapper" formats, like AVI or Quicktime (.MOV files) that hold multiple audio and video streams. The players understand the AVI format, but they rely on CODECs (CODer/DECoders) to handle the audio and video. A CODEC is basically a plug-in for a specific media type.

The disc that came with your camera should have some software you can install on your PC, which would include this MPEG-4 CODEC. If you don't have this, you might try installing any number of free tools, which MAY be able to support your camera. The problem is that most MPEG-4 cameras don't use the whole MPEG-4 specification (which includes the wrapper format, usually a .mp4 file), but just the video codec piece. Some free tools for MPEG-4 playback:

http://www.free-codecs.com/ffdshow_downl...

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_li...

If you the camera produces .MOV files (unlikely, but a few of them do), you probably want to install Apple's latest version of Quicktime, which you can find online at http://www.apple.com.

The manufacturer (or maybe importer) site for this camera is here:

http://www.jazzcameras.com