Best software for playing 3gp files?

I managed to get some 3gp files onto my Windows 2000 machine, and RealPlayer One popped up asking to download some extra data from the web—so I hooked it up, let it load, and yet somehow it still claims it can't play 3gp files.

They are video files, plain and simple—but I'm stuck since I can't run anything except wmv or avi.

What specific software do I need to install to actually get these 3gp clips running?

Media Player Classic 🙂

I’ve got Windows Media Player installed—not even sure which version—so is there actually a difference? You're acting like they aren't the same thing.

What do I need to do to download Media Player Classic?

Haha, look, it’s not just about looking like the old Microsoft Media Player. When you install MPC, it comes packed with VLC Media Player and RealPlayer alternative codecs. Once you've got those set up, you can ditch that QuickTime and RealNetworks junk entirely; you'll be able to run any movie in pretty much any player you want. Plus, MPC is actually solid.

igzektli ☕

Well, that was a bust.

I tried downloading Media Player Classic and threw a 3gp file at it—nothing. It handles AVI and WMV just fine, but when it comes to 3gp, it’s a total dead end.

The issue is pretty straightforward: Windows 2000 doesn't recognize those 3gp files at all. If you drop three different video formats into a folder, WMV gets its icon and AVI gets its usual label, but 3gp shows up as an "unknown type." Basically, Windows 2000 doesn't know what it's looking at, so it refuses to play it—period.

So, did you go ahead and download the entire QuickTime Alternative package?

I went to the QuickTime Alternative site to find the link to download Media Player Classic for Windows 2000/Windows XP—ended up with a file size of roughly 2MB.

Grab mpegableAVC; it's definitely your best bet for those *.3GP files.

James Roberts87,

Is it enough to just search Google for mpegableAVC to find what I need for the download?

Here’s what I’ve managed to dig up so far—I stumbled upon www.dicas.de via Google, which seems to cover technology for decoding *.3gp files, though it's mostly just technical specs:
mpegable AVC encoder is a MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 software

It looks like they probably want to charge for it—is there actually a free version out there somewhere? Or am I completely misreading the situation?

Sean Grant85 said:I used the link for download Media Player Classic for Windows 2000/Windows XP via the QuickTime Alternative site, and the file I ended up with was about 2MB.

If you didn't grab the QuickTime Alternative codec, what's the point of having MPC? The player is just a player. Once you install the QuickTime Alternative, you can play files in any player you want. Think of MPC as just a little extra included in the package—it isn't going to handle the playback on its own without those codecs.☕

That makes sense when you put it that way—but back when I tried moving those *.3gp files, Windows didn't recognize them at all. It just lumped them all under a generic icon instead of having their own specific look like *.avi or *.wmv files do. When I fire up VLC Media Player, nothing has changed, though. I did go ahead and grab a QuickTime Alternative again—it's about 12MB this time—so I'm hoping it’s the version you mentioned. I'll give it a shot and see if it actually claims *.3gp as its own...

Come on, let me know if anything changes. You could also try right-clicking that 3gp file > open with and setting VLC as the default. For example,

Sean Grant85 said:James Roberts87,

Can I just search Google for mpegableAVC to find the specific download I need?

Just grab it that way, then hunt down a crack if you have to.😁

Here’s how it went down.

I copied the QuickTime Alternative over to my Windows 2000 machine—and during the process, a prompt popped up suggesting I ditch the old QuickTime entirely in favor of this newer version. So, I uninstalled the old QuickTime and replaced it with the QuickTime Alternative using Media Player Classic.

After that, those annoying 2gp files automatically switched over to QuickTime icons—which looks nice enough, I suppose—but things took a turn for the worse. When I right-clicked and selected open with VLC, the Media Player Classic window appeared and tried to run the 3gp file, only for the bottom of the Media Player Classic interface to throw this error: "Failed to render file."

So, there you have it. Nothing works. Just great...🙂

Grab MPlayer (if you prefer running stuff via the command prompt) http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/rel...CVS-050928.zip

There's also a GUI version available, though it's stuck in some sort of alpha phase
http://oss.netfarm.it/mplayer/gui/mp...s-20060131.zip