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Yuk, my multimedia project does not work

© Anne Kellerman

The media does not show or display, what is wrong? It is hard to say and especially challenging if you have to develop a project that has to run on several computers and not just your own or in a lab where all the set-ups are identical.

Here are some possibilities. If the images do not show up, chances are they are not there. There could be the Web server or perhaps it is the CD-R that you carefully prepared of your project to take to another school or university. Did you remember to upload the images to the Web server or copy the images to the CD-R? Some authoring programs actually embed your media so when you copy the authored results, the media is there; however, some authoring programs only provide links to your media so if you want to move your project, you have to move not just the authored part, but the individual media components.

Another frequent problem lies in the playback computer's environment. This environment is the platform in which the multimedia project relies. If the video does not play, it could be that the codecs you used to compress and now need to decompress your video are not part of the environment of the playback computer. To find out what you have on your own computer can be tricky. You can try the following:

Start, all programs, control panel, system, hardware, device manager, sound, video and game controllers, video codecs, properties, then guess at the names.

It used to be that nearly all Wintel based computers came with Indeo so you could use Indeo to compress your video and have a good degree of comfort that Indeo would be on the playback computer. Within the last year or two this assumption has proven faulty.

Newer computers may not have Indeo. Intel sold Indeo to Ligos. With the September 2002 update to Windows XP known as Service Pack 1 Microsoft suspended distribution of Indeo codecs. Older computers may not have the latest level which is Indeo Video version 5.2. Ligos Corporation sells a package of these Indeo latest and back levels for $14.95.

Is there a codec you can be sure of? Unfortunately no. About the only thing you can do is to prompt your users for where they can download the more common codecs. Indeo can still be a good choice, Cinepak or mpeg can also be good. Just don't count on your users having what you used.

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