Issue playing back Captivate 9 mp4 files in Windows Media Player

Report · Jun 30, 2016

Hi everyone, have been looking on the forums and have tried a few things but can't seem to get this resolved, so looking to see if anyone has managed to fix this themselves.

I have been making self-help videos for 2 different companies, my own and another that we are soon to merge with. I have been using Captivate 9 on windows 8.1 to make the videos, then exporting them as .mp4s to host on their CMS and then create links to the videos for going on their intranet.

So far, if I play the video in VLC on the external company's laptop (they have sent me over their laptop which I can remotely connect to their network) then it works perfectly and I can see and hear the video in perfect clarity. If I play that exact same file through Windows Media Player on the same laptop, all I get is a thumbnail of the first screen in the video, and the audio plays along while this is displayed.

When I test the files on my own laptop they play fine in both VLC and WMP.

So we reckon there's an issue with the codec on the external company's side...

What I am wondering is, is there a way we can publish these mp4s so that they play in WMP, without having to install an encoder on everyone's machines?

I have already tried publishing the mp4 as Youtube Widescreen HD as suggested here but this did not resolve the issue. Just wondering if there's anything else I can try.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Report · Jun 30, 2016

Which version of WMP? Only version 12 supports MP4 (MS is never very up to date....) as you can read here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/316992

Alternative would be to convert MP4 to one of the formats supported by their version of WMP. Captivate installs with the older version of AME, CS6 (because that is the one that still supports FLV I believe). You can convert to AVI or even WMA.

Report · Jun 30, 2016

Hi,

Thanks for that, thats really helpful

They are using WMP 12 but I have just had more info through that it works on certain builds and not others, bit of a head scratcher.

Think I will have to convert the videos. Can you recommend any file converters?

Report · Jun 30, 2016

I mentioned Adobe Media Encoder, which ships with Captivate.

Report · Jun 30, 2016

Apologies I missed the abbreviation. I will give this a go, thanks a lot for your help.

Report · Jun 30, 2016

No problem, I must avoid acronyms, but have been typing so much today...