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[MichaelCB]

I tried to search for this issue on this site and did not see it addressed before. I have 2 942-Ls that have been good performers for 4 years now. Recently I decided to add a HD camera and bought a 2132-L. The setup was so much different than the 942 that it was a little painful, but I got through it. Everything works great except that no matter what screen resolution I select, it defaults to H.264 in the setup yet records MPEG4.

Not a big problem except I can not play this back from the SD card on any media player. Real time works.  I have windows 7 and tried windows media center version 12 which is MP4 compatible. I tried realplayer and it too is supposed to be MP4 compatible. WMP just says it encountered a problem and stops. Realplayer says the file is corrupt. I updated the camera firmware to 1.03.09 when I got the camera as it was recommended.

I also tried some freeware codec updates for WMP but my Norton stopped them all as every one had trojans in them. Does anyone have any ideas?

[JavaLawyer]

As far as the video defaulting to H.264, did you configure this through the web UI or Setup Wizard application? Try logging into the camera web UI directly using a browser on the same LAN as the camera and save the settings.

[MichaelCB]

I log in directly to the camera and use the camera utility to configure everything.

[JavaLawyer]

So, you select MPEG4 in the dropdown menu, hit save and exit the web UI, and when you log in again the value is set back to H.264?

[MichaelCB]

That was the case all afternoon. But since I did the first post I rebooted my computer and power cycled the router and camera. Now I can select MPEG4 and it remains. However, if I select H.264 it still records MPEG4 files.

The other interesting thing after the power reset is that now when I select MPEG4, I don't get an error in WMP anymore. It plays the file with audio only and the video is just a green screen. I decided to try Movie Maker and it was the same as WMP. Realplayer was still the same.

So I went back and changed it to H.264 and it recorded the file in MP4 format and the players all acted the same as earlier. Change back to MPEG4 and I get audio and green screen video.

[JavaLawyer]

Have you tried VLC Media Player? The application is extraordinarily robust and can usually play back almost anything you throw at it.

[MichaelCB]

Yes actually, in the past few minutes I hit on a good google search and came up with this: http://askubuntu.com/questions/233510/how-to-fix-video-playback-showing-green-screen-with-just-audio.

I had forgotten about VLC player. The problem in this post was exactly the same. So I downloaded it and turned off the accelerator and VLC works perfect. It wins the default spot! Was a clean and easy install too.

I would still like to get WMP working so if anyone has ideas I will take them. But there is no hurry at this time. I never look at the recordings. If I don't get an email alarm, or if it was a false alarm,  there is no point. But if I had a real problem, I need to be able to provide the videos to law enforcement fairly quickly, VLC provides that.

Thanks everyone. Again, if someone is familiar with a WMP fix for this it would be appreciated.

[JavaLawyer]

I'm glad everything is working (kinda) to your satisfaction. I personally gave up on WMP years ago and use VLC exclusively. If push comes to shove and you need a more widely compatible video format to share specific files, there are plenty of brute force methods available to convert the footage to a more portable codec/container.

[MichaelCB]

Thank you for the help and time you took JavaLawyer. I see from this site that you do this a lot. I am getting pretty sick of the big boys. Microsoft knew they had a problem with MP4 files in WMP and have known for years based on my research today. There were message boards I found dating back years where people had problems in WMP with MP4 files and the MS advice was to update your audio and video drivers. They continue to advertise WMP as MP$ compliant.  Yet in this plug-n-play time they continue to ignore it and waste time for a lot of people. I gave away a XP computer to Goodwill recently because all of a sudden IE 9 would no longer work. The fix was IE 11. The catch was that I first had to upgrade to windows 8. So, that desktop went away and I'll never forgive MS for this push. They thought that I would just pay for the upgrade that would have tons of problems trying to get a 6 year old computer working with all the new BS. So, I bought 2 W7 laptops as I believe that W7 is the best and most stable OS that MS ever put out. Now I have a couple years to get rid of them. I also bought an android nexus 7 tablet and android laptop and am evaluating those. I have a freeware open Office program that works pretty good. I also bought a little $39 raspberry with all freeware and am playing with that. This has potential in a few years.

Sorry for the rant. I only intended to say thank you.