# [SOLVED] Playing video files on Philips GoGear SA3VBE08RN/02 MP4 player



## louise898

Hi there,

I am looking for some advice. I recently bought a Philips GoGear SA3VBE08RN/02 MP4 player. I am quite happy with the product, and am able to play audio files no problem. I _am_ however, having great difficulty in getting video files to play. 

I believe (the product packaging and website says so) that I should be able to play .mp4 files, but the only file which I can get to play is the one which was embedded on the player when I bought it. 

I have tried a) downloading other .mp4 files from the internet; b) several different conversion programs to convert video files I already have (.avi) to .mp4 (including VLC player; ArcSoft MediaConverter 7; Xilisoft; AVS Video Converter 8.1), but still with no success. 

The Philips support people cannot help - all they have suggested is that I use their "Songbird" program, which doesn't actually have a conversion feature within it anyway (at least I can't find one). They _did _send me a webpage with the appropriate file specs within it, but I don't know what I am actually doing wrong:

SA3VBE08RN/02 Philips GoGear MP4 player SA3VBE08RN ViBE 8*GB* with FullSound

Could someone advise? Perhaps there is a better conversion program, or perhaps I am choosing the wrong options when saving the output file..? I don't really understand what the specs mean from the above webpage.

Many thanks in advance!

Louise


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## ebackhus

*Re: Playing video files on Philips GoGear SA3VBE08RN/02 MP4 player*

MP4 is a container, just like AVI and MPG. What matters is the CODEC used.


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## zuluclayman

*Re: Playing video files on Philips GoGear SA3VBE08RN/02 MP4 player*

as Ebackhus has said - the codec is the important bit - when you convert the files to mp4 you will have to set the compression to use Motion JPEG as the codec - unfortunately there are many versions of the Motion JPEG codec, mostly variations by manufacturers meaning that their version is the only one that will work with their products. I have had a quick look and haven't found the Phillips one yet but will keep looking.

Format Factory (link in my signature) is a good freeware converter which has a number of mp4 formats for mobile devices and has brand specific conversion presets listed under "all to mobile" - it only has DivX codec listed (no other options) but may work. You can try converting your files with different settings listed for mobiles - it won't alter your originals, just makes a copy with the new encoding.

There are some commercially available converters that claim to convert to Phillips friendly formats - I'm not sure how effective they actually are - someone who has one of these devices and has used the software may chime in here :grin:

To get the full specs of the files that work, download and install either Mediainfo or GSpot then xfer a copy of the sample file and open it in either codec info tool and post a screenshot here.


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## louise898

*Re: Playing video files on Philips GoGear SA3VBE08RN/02 MP4 player*

Hi guys,

Thanks very much for the replies! Thanks especially for the link to Format Factory and the explanation of codecs and the like - I was struggling a bit with that one on my own.

I am pleased to say I have now managed to get files converted and playing successfully on my MP4 player! It took a couple of steps - I discovered that once I had successfully converted the files, they still wouldn't play properly _unless _I used the Philips Songbird software to actually add the files to my player... Just dragging and dropping the files kept giving me the file error message. Don't know why that would be the case, as audio files drag and drop just fine, but anyway, it's working!

Thanks again for the help! Best wishes,

Louise


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## zuluclayman

Thanks for posting back with the complete solution - there may well be others that will be happy to see this.

I have marked this thread as solved - if you have further enquiries about this matter post here and we will "unsolved" it :grin:


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