“Last month, I got a much-needed break from my job after the completion of an exhaustive project. I decided to binge-watch several of my favorite movies and sat down with my laptop. But as soon as I selected the video file and opened it, the player gave an error, ‘Unsupported video format.’ My plans were shattered, and I had to cope up with watching the TV all the time.”
It was one of the common scenarios where you are not able to watch the video due to the annoying error ‘unsupported video format.’ The message shows that the video format is not playable on your video player. If you play the video on any other player, then the error may go out, and the video will play. But, if the error persists in multiple players, then you need to fix the video file.
Each video file like MP4, POV, AVI, FLV, 3GP, MKV has a unique file structure and is created on different devices like mobile, camera, camcorders, webcam, etc. The media player is designed to play some specific file formats, and when you try to play some other format’s video file, you will get some error.
For e.g., Windows Media Player does not support the AVI file format. So, if you run the AVI video file in the Windows Media Player, then it will not play. If you run the AVI video file in the Windows Media Player, it will not play.
Here are some critical points which you can try to remove the error and enjoy your video uninterruptedly.
1. Install the Proper Codec for an Unsupported Video File
Codec is generally either hardware or software which encodes and decodes the video file. You can install a codec for the video file, which is not working in the video player.
- Install Codec in Windows Media Player – Follow the steps:
- In Windows Media Player, go to Tools, click Options.
- Select the Player tab, check the box Download codecs automatically and click OK.
- Now, when you play the video, then a pop-up message will appear to install the codec. Click Install.
- Install Codec in VLC Player – VLC Player is the freeware video player which is used by many. The codec is present in the setup of the player. So, you do not need to install a separate codec file but update the player only. Follow the steps:
- Follow Start>>All Programs>>VideoLAN>>VLC Media Player.
- Follow Help>>Check for Updates.
- Click Yes and install the latest updates. Choose a location to save the update file, and it will download.
2. Use Another Media Player
It is simple logic to use a different media player to play the video file. Some players are designed to run specific formats, and you need to install codecs in them to run the video. But there are some video players like VLC player that can run the majority of the video formats. It possibly can run your video file, which is showing the error message.
3. Convert the Format Of The Video File
One easy method to get rid of the error is to change the video format. Nowadays, multiple tools can complete the job for you quickly. But you should note that while changing the video format, the video may lose some audio or video quality, reducing the resolution. For video format conversion, you can try Video Converter. It supports almost all popular video file formats for conversion and is easy to use.
Repair the Corrupt Video File
If the error message remains in the video player even after performing all this troubleshooting, it means that the video file is corrupt and needs to fix the corruption. The manual methods to recover the video are never trustworthy, and generally, they even downgrade the quality of the video. That’s why you should use the Video Repair tool. It is trustworthy recovery software that can handle any video corruption and recover the whole video in the original format. With the ability to repair multiple video files in one go, this is one of the fastest video repair solutions. It repairs video files of all major formats like MP4, MKV, MPEG, WMV, M4A, MTS, F4V, WEBM, FLV, AVI, DIVX, etc., created on any device. After the repair, you can save the video at any location on your system.
