Stinky's MPEG-2 codec to the rescue

For some non-obvious reason, my colleage couldn't encode MPEG-2 files to Flash 8 video using Brightcove's Publishpod application, which has a built-in Flash encoder. All he got was the audio track, no video. We both have the same laptop and OS, yet Publishpod on mine works flawlessly.

After running Microsoft's MPEG-2 codec check utility on both machines it turned out I have 10 MPEG-2 decoders installed while he only has two, one of which isn't on my list. Rather than trying to replicate all the codecs on my machine to his, I went to Google looking for a free codec to download. The one that seemed to the be the most popular was "Stinky's MPEG-2 Decoder" - a name that does not instill a lot of confidence in a successful resolution to our problem.

But, after a quick download and install, Publishpod worked as advertised on my colleague's machine. Stinky's, it seems, smells like a rose.

• Software
• codec
• mpeg-2
• video