techy question about mpeg4 films (sorry, dull I know)

[CaRowlers]

I use my digital camera to take MPeg4 films.
I have always been able to play them on my old computer but they have been really slow.
Got a new PC yesterday and we played a couple of films last night and they worked fine.
This morning, I have tried to watch films again and keep getting the message "Cannot open the file *** because it is not a file that Quicktime understands".
I have no idea what I have done nor how to rectify it!
I kinow it's a long shot but anyone got any ideas?

It's to do with codecs (the translation files the computer uses to open certain movie files) but beyond that I'm stumped. You probably need to download some. Google on MPeg4 and codec?

Georgina, Thanks!
God knows what that means though.
Have just been fiddling and I can play the films only if I click and drag them, and drop them over the windows media player icon on the front screen.
I just don't get it ...

I may well be wildly off-base here, but that kind of sounds as though Quicktime is set up to be the default for all movie files, but doesn't recognise MPegs, maybe. So perhaps you need to tell it to open all MPeg files using Windows Media Player instead? (apologies for wild stab in the dark, I'm sure Georgina knows a lot more than me)

My computer has problems with .avi files off my Canon cameras... Quicktime will display them but not Windows Media Player (simple solution - I just use Quicktime ) ... but according to my techy friends it is to do with codecs... but my techy friends couldn't fix it either so bleugh.

I did find a proggy that fixed it here - the Morgan M-JPEG codec V3. But you have to pay for it after a trial period and said techy friends said that it's criminal to have to pay for codecs. But all the free codecs stuff I've installed doesn't fix the problem. Don't know if the proggy will fix your issues - might be worth installing on the free 60 day trial just to see?

No Tinsel I don't - I just bluff better

At least you know the word "codec"

Tinsel has a good point though - see if you can open in Windows Media Player... then if it works we can talk you through setting it up so that the file type automatically opens in that.

Typical.
I knew it would be an easy problem to fix and I was just being dim.
I opened a folder in explorer and right clicked on one of the mpeg4 films. Selected properties and realised where it says "opens with ..." there was no software selected. Chose windows media, applied it and they all now open no problem.
How thick am I?
Thanks for the help though. Sometimes just knowing someone else is trying to help you is enough to stop you from banging your head against the proverbial brick wall!
Thought I was going to go mad...
And I am SO glad it was nothing to do with codecs Georgina. That was really way beyond my pea-brain!

YAY! Glad it's working now

And now I am watching all the films we have made of DD over the last 9 months.
How much she has changed!
I am so glad we bought that camera and so relieved now it's all working!
Will spend hours now writing it all to CD so we have back-ups. I'd be heart-broken if we lost it all, hence my desperate plea for help earlier!
Thanks again.

Hurrah, well done