Lost all of my videos

[debby]

Not sure if I'm in the right place for this question, but I was looking through my photos and I see that all of my videos have been "whited out" (rather than blackened out) and I don't know why. I clicked on one to play it and you can hear stuff in the background, but no picture. I haven't done anything, changed my computer in any way and last time I looked, about two weeks ago, everything was there. I have a Dell Inspirion, i5-4460 CPU @ 3.20GHz  3.20 GHz, RAM: 8.00 GB, 64-bit operating system, running Windows 10. Some of those videos were important to me as I did them a year before my dad died and it has a lot of him on there. I do have an external Seagate drive that I backup pictures to, but I haven't done it in a while and am afraid those videos are not on there. Besides that, when I plug the Seagate in, I don't really know what to do with it.  I know, I shouldn't even be operating a computer!  But if anyone has any advice, I'd appreciate it!

[strollin]

Since you can see an icon representing the video and when you click on it you hear sound, it's obvious the videos are there.

Do you know what application is assigned to play videos on your machine?  Maybe something got corrupted in that application.  You could try reinstalling that app or installing a different app.

[Geek-9pm]

Maybe the Windows Media Player got damaged .
There are many alternatives to the Windows Media Player
https://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-free-media-player
Many like VLC Media Player as an alternative.
It is free.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
 

[debby]

I wouldn't think that anything is damaged. I did get one video to play.  I have two photo programs. One is Photo Gallery and the other is Windows Photo that came on the computer.  Neither program is playing the videos.

[2x3i5x]

Just wondering two things: 1. When you try to play videos, do you see any error message or does the video just load to the player you're using and just stutter?

2. What formats are the videos in? (Don't think it really matters, but just curious anyway)


And also, I like the klite codec pack. Choose either the basic pack or the standard pack (only difference is that standard pack comes with a media player with the pack that you can try but otherwise no difference. The others have more than what you need for playback and isn't needed anyway). It installs the major codecs needed for most (if not all) common video filetypes.

Good luck, let us know how things go

[debby]

When I try to play videos, I see no error message, the screen is just white and I can hear the talking in the video. What do you mean by format? I don't know. I'm somewhat computer stupid.  But...I just happened to notice I have ArcImpressions and I have three videos on there. All three played just fine. I'm thinking something with an easy fix has happened. Tomorrow, I plan to call the people that work on my computer, tell them the problem and see if they can fix it remotely. They've done that a lot for me and they are VERY reasonable with their charges.

[2x3i5x]

What do you mean by format?

When I said format, I meant what is the filetype of the video (i.e., are they mp4 files, are they mkv files, are they mkv files are some other kind of video filetype). Hope that makes sense.

Good luck with the people who work on your computer. May want to ask them what went wrong if it is a simple fix so you can take care of things yourself if it's possible

[jack_miller]

I can understand how important the videos are for you since it is related to your Pop.

I guess you can do two things i order to fix the video issue.

1st) either the videos are corrupted or
2nd) your media player is not working properly.

Did you try to play any other video? Is it working?

If it's not working then you will have to use any other video player. There are several video player which are free - https://www.winosbite.com/best-video-player-for-windows-10/

And if your video is corrupted, then you may again use 2 option:

1st) Restore the PC to the previous date
2nd) Use Recuva recovery software - they have 2 versions, free and paid - https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva/download

Best of luck!!

[debby]

Well, I was too trifling to mess with my computer and took it to a repair shop, and they did a fix on it. They added a K-Lite Codec Pack to it to play my videos.  I don't like it too much, color saturation and just plain bad videos is what I get.  They looked so nice before this happened.  Also, I had lost Cortana on my Start menu...I don't know where it went...and their fix was to put this big white blob on my taskbar for searches and a Cortana shortcut next to it.  I don't like that much either. I figure the Cortana thing was just a setting to put it back to where it was. And the technician also said that the only videos that seem to play are the low resolutions and not the high resolutions. Well, when he said that, I also figured that would be a setting somewhere.  I think all this happened before an update of the last one, like two updates ago.  I just didn't really notice.  I guess I'm stuck with what I've got right now.  Can't afford another "fix" right yet.

[strollin]

Geek mentioned VLC in a post above.  The reason why VLC is preferred by many is because it comes with just about every codec you could ever need/want so no need for something like the K-Lite Codec Pack.

Why don't you try VLC?  Download it here: http://www.videolan.org/