Whats a dv codec?

Question

i installed home movie maker but when i tried to open it it says "Home movie maker could not find a DV codec to use"

whats a dv codec

Answer 1

A CODEC is a program for CODing and DECoding some kind of information, in this case, DV video. Microsoft has been shipping Windows with a DV CODEC (not a great one, but it works) since around Windows 2000, so it's hard to guess what you're missing.

Could be that "home movie maker" (whatever that is) is looking for a "Video for Windows" CODEC rather than a "DirectShow" CODEC.  CODECs run under control of some multimedia framework. On the Macintosh, this nearly always one called Quicktime... on the PC, you can have the old one, Video for Windows, the new on, DirectShow, and even imports like Quicktime (you get this if you install iTunes).

Anyway, it's up to the program to use the multimedia subsystem the programmer intended, and you don't always have everything for every subsystem.

Anyway, try this... here's a free DV CODEC from Panasonic. Depending on just where your original one went (assuming you're not off running Windows 95 or something), this might help.

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

You might solve future missing CODEC problems by downloading one of the big "CODEC packs" that have been put together as freeware. An example is the K-Lite CODEC pack, here:

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