H.264 Explained in Plain English

H.264 is a newish video compression technology that is gaining popularity. However, at the time of this writing, (September 2007) niether Microsoft nor Apple include an H.264 codec with their media players. If you have dowloaded a video file where you can only hear the audio, chances are good that you have an H.264-encoded file. It may also be a DIVX file or something else, so be sure to check our Fix Movies page if needed.

VLC, the free media player, can play H.264 files on the Mac and Windows. Also for Windows is the free K-Lite Code Pack which will install the H.264 codec and many other codecs that you may need. It also comes with a free media player that we like better than the annoying Windows Media Player.

Note: H.264-encoded files may have different file extensions, such as .AVI, etc. So, you can't tell it is an H.264-encoded file just by looking at the filename. To find out what codec was used on a file, use the free GSpot program linked-to on our Fix Movies page.