When Your Smart TV Complains, "Unsupported Codec"

Sometimes in life we realize something after the fact that would be a superior solution to a compromise made early on out of haste or impatience.

Case in point, my Samsung "smart" TV's inability to support various video codecs for digital media like movies, TV shows, and other files. Up until now given this happens relatively rarely (but still happens), I've simply found another format or used the excellent and free tool Handbrake to re-encode the video into a more conventional one like MP4. However, upon trying to play and stream to my TV a set of old movies I'd obtained over a decade ago, all but a couple of these returned "unsupported codec" and were unplayable.

Enter the excellent gift my brother-in-law gave my wife and I, an Amazon Fire Stick. At under $30 this remarkably versatile device plugs into an available HDMI port on your TV and comes with its own remote with voice recognition to boot, as well as interoperability with Alexa if that's your thing (it's not mine).

Basically, you plug the Stick itself into the TV's HDMI, then run a USB cable from the provided AC adapter to a micro USB plug on the side of the Fire Stick. Then, turn on your smart TV and select the HDMI port your Fire Stick is plugged into as the video source. 

While it has lots of features including integration with numerous free and pay streaming services, the one that turned out to help in my situation tremendously is the fact that while depending on what smart TV you have, it may or may not allow you easy access in order to install Android apps, for example. Unfortunately, my model of Samsung TV is locked down pretty tight with its proprietary operating system and interface, and has a relatively slim collection of apps to choose from.

For example, I tried first to find a way to access files that are not video, audio, or photos from say a USB stick plugged into the TV. No joy there, only those specific files types are visible, precluding simply downloading a (hopefully) compatible .APK for VLC and installing it. Sure, while Samsung exposes an API for their TVs and other devices, I'm not inclined to break out my favorite IDE and trudge through the weeds of an unfamiliar platform just for a one-off workaround. 

However, thankfully the Fire Stick enables you to download any available apps on the Amazon app store, including VLC, and that's excellent, because VLC is a great app! The player is completely free thanks to the generosity of its developer team VideoLAN, a nonprofit organization.

Once the Fire Stick is set up with your wifi connection details, you can access streaming services and other network resources, including your networked NAS device, PCs, etc. on your home network. In my case I have most of my media on a Synology NAS, so in VLC I'm able to browse its shared folders and pick what to play from its directory.

Since setting up the Fire Stick, all the video files I mentioned that the Samsung TV's own media player balked at were completely playable by VLC. That's one of my favorite things about VLC, it plays virtually every codec you might throw at it. It's got that comprehensive a collection of codecs that among the hundreds or thousands of videos I've played with it, I could count on one hand those I've had it fail to play (don't worry, not a mutant with more than five per hand).

Bonus, VLC enables you to seek out subtitles for your hearing impaired or hungover audience members, and will let you download multiple ones from the internet and pick and choose until you find one that syncs properly with your media's audio. 

One tip with that, when trying a particular set of subtitles, once you select it in VLC it will take just a few seconds before the subtitle text appears during playback. Don't hurry, just wait a bit so you can verify whether the subs are proper, and if not, download or pick another set, try again, and once you find one, off you go.

Zoom Cannot Start Video With Older Webcams in Windows 10

I've had a Logitech QuickCam Fusion webcam since around the time Windows 7 was still mainstream. Other than from my work laptop I don't do online meetings so the camera largely went unused on my home desktop, even after upgrading to Windows 10. 

Then, one day my wife and I installed Zoom and wanted to test it out prior to her joining some Zoom calls with some of her old high school classmates. While her setup with Windows 10 and a relatively new (ca. 2021) webcam worked flawlessly, mine did not. Repeatedly Zoom would complain whether in the video settings or upon joining a meeting, "Cannot start video":

My solution took some trial and error but ultimately worked. First, unplug your webcam from its USB port, and then open Device Manager, and under Imaging devices, right-click on Logitech QuickCam Fusion (or whatever your older webcam is):

Ensure "Delete the driver software for this device" is checked so that whatever driver Windows may have initially used is removed, then click Uninstall and follow any prompts to remove the drivers:

Next, download and install the latest available drivers you can find for your old webcam, ideally for Windows 10, but at least for Windows 7. With some older webcams it's entirely possible you won't find any drivers let alone ones for Windows 7 or newer. If that's the case, skip the following.

Otherwise, on Logitech's site, upon searching for QuickCam Fusion, you'll notice the default operating system is set to Windows 11. Click and choose the only other option, Windows 7, and you'll be prompted to download the newest Windows drivers. 

Plug the webcam into a free USB port, and Windows will proceed to install either the driver you found and installed, or a compatible driver included with Windows. Assuming all goes well, from the Start menu type "Camera privacy settings" and ensure "Allow apps to access your camera" is set to On:

Further down the screen, ensure all apps (except Zoom, if listed) are set to Off:

Now, ensure "Allow desktop apps to access your camera" is set to On:

If you haven't already, install the latest Zoom desktop client. Before you proceed, go ahead and restart your PC to let Windows complete any post-configuration or housekeeping stuff that may linger. Then, once back at the desktop, create a system restore point to preserve things in case something blows up (unlikely, but always a possibility; my system decided to BSOD at least once during the process, better safe than sorry).

That's it. Upon opening Zoom and going into Settings => Video, you should see your face or whatever your webcam is currently seeing, and in meetings with video enabled things should proceed just fine.

Fennec Chard

 

R.I.P., Reddit User /u/DarthContinent

I can't say Christmas and the 2021 holiday season have been reason for me to be remotely festive.

In May of 2020 I lost my mom (granted, MAGA "Democrat hoax" believing mom). This past year, I lost two beloved dogs in quick succession to nightmarishly aggressive cancer. Allow me to introduce them!

Miles, my longtime "fren" and drinking buddy, left. Ava, my dear, sweet, gentle girl, right.

Both of them now live only as memories in the tapestry of our lives, and as ash in a couple of rosewood boxes on my dining table. No telling when my wife and I will be able to summon the courage to properly bury them with some of our other late furry friends in our backyard.

Oh, and as an aside, my 16 year old Reddit account was permanently suspended recently. In the AskReddit subreddit, I made a joke about, and I quote, "Sex with a miner." Miner, as in adult who spends their days working in the coal or other mine. Not by any means an underaged child.

Given Reddit quietly announced their upcoming IPO, in a perverse way it makes sense they'd want to essentially sanitize their user base. People speaking out against things like censorship, the Tiannenmen Square massacre, China variously exploiting and exterminating the Uyghurs?

Going forward, this is the new face of Reddit in my mind. The wildly popular meme of Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh, given China has invested considerable assets into Reddit and its ilk.

Today, fascism and censorship and casting human beings away like offal is the new normal, apparently. I'm far too lazy and unmotivated to battle the nowadays deplorable Snoo and its pals. I'm not about to invest thousands upon thousands of dollars to set up a smartly cloud-based platform to rival Reddit, a longtime platform that filled in the vacuum in the wake of the tragic Digg exodus.

A wise mentor once said, "Keep small things small and simple things simple, for as long as you can." Sage advice! 

If I despaired over some faceless, deplorable miscreants essentially upending the sand mandala that was my 16 years on Reddit, contributing my life experiences personal and professional, even my money in buying their "awards" for dropping dollar bills into their coffers, I'd consider myself in a bad space.

Serendipitously, however, this whole moist sac of nonsense lately has for literally days taken my mind off the devastating grief that I presently shoulder in the wake of the loss of our dogs. It's become a watershed realization for me, that hey, maybe the whole sand mandala thing being upended and destroyed once the work is done isn't such a bad thing!

I'm starting from scratch, and I plan to lurk incessantly on Reddit because I'm motivated to help people and leverage my intellect, expertise, and experience to do so. No petty bunch of cash grabbing, visionless plebes will keep me from doing so.

Please, today's Reddit, accept a hearty FUCK YOU. You more than deserve it. 🙂