Hi, I tried to play a .flv file downloaded from YouTube. It can be played by standalone players such as FLVPlayer.exe and Riva FLV Encoder 2. However, I want to use a CODEC so that I can play it in Windows Media Player 11. I downloaded and installed XP Codec Pack 2.4.3, which includes ffdshow. Wikipedia says that ffdshow can play flv files on any DirectShow-compatible player including WMP. However, when I try and play it WMP says it can't. Is there any configuration I need to do to make WMP use the ffdshow codec, or any configuration I need to make in ffdshow to make it play flv files? Thanks in advance.

Have you tried rebooting since you installed the codec pack?

Yes, I have rebooted. Unfortunately, WMP still says "Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file." Note that the file I was trying to play was more than a year old, and I would have thought ffdshow would have caught up with any flv codec used to encode it.

There is a free program called Gspot that might help. It can determine which codec a video requires. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

Thanks, I'll have a look at GSpot, see if it provides a useful clue, and I'll report back soon.

Also give videolan a try, Generally if something won't play in video lan it won't play at all ;) http://www.videolan.org/ Got a problem? give www.support.com a try

Thanks, it actually plays in FLVplayer.exe so I know that the file is playable. I just wanted it to be playable inside WMP too.