Playing .mod Video Files

[AlanDyson]

I've spent some time trying to find out why .mod files play perfectly well on my Vaio laptop but not on my Samsung netbook, even though they both run Windows 7 and Windows Media Player 12 with apparently identical sets of codecs. I soon found this was a common problem for people with certain Canon, JVC and Panasonic camcorders, so I thought it might be helpful if I post the answer.

It's because the Vaio has a DVD player and the netbook doesn't. This means that the WMP codecs are actually different, although the technical support information shows the same list on both computers. Installing Windows Essential Media Codec Pack 3.1 (downloaded from cnet) makes the Samsung's WMP recognise .mod files.

But there's a catch. The installation includes Media Player Classic, which overrides WMP 12. The snag with that is that this setup cannot be set to play clips in a 16:9 aspect ratio (at least I couldn't find a way), which I found was a problem with earlier versions of WMP. Why does Microsoft do this? Maybe SP1 will provide some advance but I'll not hold my breath.

I would rather have kept WMP as my only media player but eventually went for the VLC Player (videolan.org) which does the job nicely.

 

[Shark007]

I would rather have kept WMP as my only media player

With the right codecs, you can still use WMP.
Uninstall that codec pack and install the Shark007 Win7codecs.

Open the installed Settings Application, at the bottom, choose to use the SUGGESTED settings
and then on the SWAP TAB, disable the Microsoft Video decoder.