Video taken by Samsung Fascinate wont play on PC

[HarleyDrifter]

PJNC284:

Hey thanks PJ, that's solves file transfer issues for me big time, and it will make file management a whole lot easier and more standardized too.  Goodbye Verizon Media Manager!  (-:

I've got two laptop PC's: one has Vista and windows media player, and the other's a new Dell with XP and RealPlayer and neither will play so I'm still working on that. 

Thanks again for all your help.

[HarleyDrifter · Accepted solution]

OK everyone I've had a couple days to troubleshoot my Fascinate's video playback issues, and here's what I've found:

Transferring the Fascinate's files to a PC:

First of all, I've deleted Verizon's VCast Media Manager from my PC for two reasons:

1. It wont play the frikkin Fascinate's video files no matter what I do.
2. It's a lot easier to just transfer files directly into any PC by just connecting the USB cable.  When I go into "My Computer" on my Vista PC, the drive that appears after connecting the cable is called "Removable Disk (I)".  You wont see any of the phones data here yet until you pick up your phone and go to:  Notifications > USB Connected > Mount.  Now if you go back to the PC and click "Removable Disk (I)" > DCIM > Camera you will see all of your picture and video files displayed.  You can view, edit, copy, delete, mail, play, or whatever, right from here if you want.  By the way I renamed the drive from "Removable Disk" to "Fascinate" just to make it easier for me to find.

Playing the Fascinate's videos on a PC:

• DivX Plus Player  At first I couldn't get the Fascinate's mp4 video files to playback with any of the players on my PC including Verizon's VCast.  After rechecking the phone's video specs, I saw that it was DivX Certified, went to the DivX website, downloaded the free DivX Player Plus, and "bingo" my video files finally played - beautifully - and I didn't have to modify or convert anything.
• Windows Media Player  I went to the Microsoft website and looked up Media Player and found out that it does not support mp4 format, however it did list the audio/video formats that it can play and one of those was WMV.  I then dragged one of my mp4 video files over to the desktop (created a short-cut) and RENAMED the file extension from .mp4 to .WMV, then double clicked on the new icon, and "voila" it PLAYED.  Now I didn't run this thing through any conversion software converting it to another format, I just changed the file extension and fooled Windows Media Player to play it, and it did.  I'll admit I got a warning message after renaming the file but I ignored it, and the file played just as nicely as it did in the DivX player.
• QuickTime Player  This is Apple's player and anyone who has a Mac is using this player, however, you can also get a free PC version from them which I downloaded and to make a long story short, I renamed the file extension of my video to .MOV and guess what?  It played and just as well as it did on the other two players.

By the way, after posting "Fascinate's video wont playback on PC" to Verizon tech support, they actually called me on the phone attempting to resolve the issue rather then just emailing me.  Unfortunately I wasn't there to take the call and when I called back I got someone else who wasn't really set up to deal with video issues but they were very friendly and professional and tried to resolve it anyway.  We didn't come up with a solution for as to why the Fascinates videos wouldn't play back, and I had already gotten the DivX player to work, so we left it at that.  Still, I think that was pretty good of them to call me back.  So anyway, I'm going to hit "Accept as solution" even though I don't think it's the solution, but rather it's good enough for now.

Well this has been my experience, I'm no expert, I'm just an old dog trying to learn a new trick in a world full of cats.

Lance