I'm running XP
When I download a movie sometimes the run time on it is quite short - much shorter than what the file size would indicate. When I click on various points of the 'seek' bar different sections of the video will play. Is this just a problem with the file or am I missing certain software to run these movies? rfm2007

rfm2007

I think you are missing an essential point, and that is size of a file does not determine how long a film (or film clip) will last. At best, file size it is a rough guide and nothing more.

The timing of a film is dependant on the compression ratio and file type used to composed that film into a computer file, e.g. wmv, mov, mpg, avi, etc. For example, a large file (of about 200MB) could only last a few minutes (and I have come across plenty of those) while another file of the same size can last over an hour.

Therefore, the timing and quality of a film or film clip depends on several other factors than just size.

Hope this helps.



UK Bob

THank you UK Bob for your reply. I understand about the compression modes that are used but that wasn't my problem.
My problem is that when I download an mpeg or an avi sometimes I will download a 90 min. movie but the length of the movie on 'Media Player' or 'RealPlayer' is only, say, 5 minutes. If I click half way down the seek bar a couple of times I will get a portion of the movie much later in the movie (if that makes sense). If I could get the runtime to read 90 minutes on MediaPlayer or RealPlayer I wouldn't have a problem.
Understandez-vous?? Any help is much appreciated, RFM

Rfm2007

I think I understand your problem, your media players do not always register the correct length/timing of a film.

You know, everybody suffers from that problem, for example sometimes my VLC player will register a film as "0.00" yet it will play the entire film perfectly, which I think is more important. Recently, one of my films came up as only 1m 32sec in length yet the film played without any problems.

The only thing you can do is upgrade your media players when the upgrades become available.



UK Bob