Quote Originally Posted by wylk View Post
I'll try!

The file containing the Modern Marvels "Doors" episode was made available in the form of a .m4v file, one of too many file formats for movies. For some reason, after it downloads, some computers (Windows computers?) rename it to a .mp4 file extension. I'm not certain this is bad, the two formats are either similar or identical; for more info check the Wikipedia entry on the .mp4 file type. I think it is at least impolite to rename a file, I really dislike when software tries to do me a favor by thinking it's smarter than everybody.

With either extension, the file will not play for me.

Just like there are too many file formats, there are too many movie players.

If I try using Windows Media Player (WMP), I get an error message that is its generic "something went wrong" message (Windows Media Player cannot play the file...). If I try to play it using Apple's Quicktime player, I get an "error 23132: an unknown error occured". Another popular player is "VLC media player" from VideoLAN.org (it was recommended to me by a friend to play formats that Windows Media Player won't play such as DVDs) but all it does is flash the first frame of the movie and go black. I've also tried a video conversion tool called WinFF which converts .avi files to .mov and many, many other combinations of formats but with "Doors" it immediately fails with "Invalid pixel format '-1'". I tried a web site that purports to diagnose and repair .mp4 files but it failed, too, with the error message "Error". I tried downloading the iTunes app and finally have an idea of what's wrong: "This computer is not authorized to play "Doors"" and it then asks me for an Apple ID and password.

So, I think the actual problem is that the file that VaultDoors kindly made available uses digital copyright management to ensure that only he can view it (to ensure that people pay for it, and to prevent them from distributing it for free). Unfortunately this causes bizarre and unintelligible failures of many other video-playing software packages.
Ok, sorry about that guys. I wasn't aware it would only let me view it. It's available online from Amazon and other sites for $1.99. If you plan to buy the .m4v version be aware that iTunes does not have frame advance but QuickTime does by using the arrow keys. You can hold the arrow keys down for slow motion which is what I did since the CFR clips run so fast.