Oh wow. I'm so sorry to say this, but you are either very well misinformed or just don't understand.

No program requires you change any file association with any file in order for that program to use it. In the case of audio files, a typical program takes these steps in order to play a file:

Load a tangible/usable interface to handle the file. Usually you see the program itself use a built in decoder. Winamp has several built in local decoders for this job, which in no way affect Windows. If they do no have it then in the case of OGG, that would normally be a local vorbis dll. Vorbis does not come with windows, and is supported through local (meaning immediate location of the program) and directshow support. Again for this Winamp and other programs like Foobar2000 have localized support for this natively, they in no way affect windows or programs outside of their jurisdiction. As for MP3 in windows, the same applies as it would for OGG. In most cases they use local decoder, but since the use of MP3s means using proprietary content (encoding and decoding MP3s is a copyrighted process), they either use Windows' local decoder (in system32) or take their hands off of it completely and use DirectShow filters.

When it comes down to a DirectShow filter, the filter used is controlled by a priority list of filters Windows has access to through the system registry. That list you see in InstalledCodec just so happens to be that list. The codecs or filters shown on that list each have their own individual settings that let Window's know what formats they support and have control on if they are activated for use.

There is not one part of this step where a 3rd party program is ever loaded or referenced for the use of the audio format. Windows never loads a program to query whether or not the file can use it. You can go ahead and remove WMP completely and the system runs fine, because the program and windows itself never talks to the program at any one point in the process. You can see the process completely like someone said before. Using a Microsoft tool called Process Explorer, you can see that there is not one point where a program that is associated with the file is queried or loaded, only associated directshow filters and the local vorbis dll.

It then buffers the audio file into memory for the decoder/filter, outputs it through said decoder/filter, then it outputs the audio to the sound controller. This last bit is controlled almost exclusively on the decoder/filter, and is now outside the hands of the main program.

I've programed in this many times. Not in one instance of that routine does the file ever get opened by some 3rd party program in order to run. DirectShow, is merely just an platform through which developers can create filters for audio/video for a wide variety of standards without the use of drivers and programs that could hamper the use of the OS. Problems for my programs that use DirectShow have problems stemming from filters on Directshow only.

I do not know where the heck you got the idea that this has been a problem since Morrowind. If I'm not mistaken, many of those problems came from directshow filters that came with whatever pack or program they were using at the time. If Winamp happened to be the case, it was never down to the use of Winamp, but whatever crappy filter the user decided to install that does not come with vanilla Winamp in a local filter/decoder. Your also suggesting that no one uses OGG. And that is where I draw the line at your understanding. I won't even go into an argument over that, but my god you sound as though you only just got the information a few days before suggesting help to people. To change association to files for a game that has no right to do so on a user's system is just asking for trouble.

this worked for me finaly found a fix i still have a long list of codecs to weed out but im just gona enjoy the game for a while till i need a codec for a movie

Thx

I checked temperature of cpu and gpu but everything is within normal parameters.
I was wondering if a freak coincidence matched the installation of fallout 3 and hardware breakdown but this also seems unlikely but possible (doo doo doo doo doo doo!! thats x-files theme )

So i'm about to format the damn thing and reinstall everything from the start. That seems far fetched for debugging a game which will probably will not work anyway until a real patch.

From Bethesda. I would not state it if they had not put it on their support pages, or it worked to fix issues in Morrowind or Oblivion.

There was a Technical Support page for Morrowind at the Bethesda site that told folks that they needed to make sure the MP3 files are associated with WMP, in particular to play the opening movies. Also, for game crashes.

Here it is

http://support.gamesas.com/asp/resolution.asp?sid=000114081110072175251233&pid=1101&pnm=Morrowind&seid=2198&pos=Windows+XP&top=Error+Messages&rid=15971

Some folks can not get past the opening sequence, so this is a possible fix. There are other pages stating this as a fix for other issues in Morrowind, but I am not going to find them for you.

If you peruse the Oblivion Hardware Forums, you will see in the UFAQ's that associating MP3's with Windows Media Player is a common fix for a variety of issues, inlcuding crashes and strangely enough, Mouse issues. It would not be there if it was not for the fact that it worked.

So, two games put out by Bethesda, both needing Windows Media Player associations to fix issues.

Now, you may not program things this way, or you may not have seen this in some other programs, but it works for some issues in Oblivion and Morrowind. Argue it all you want with me (not in this thread), but the fact is, it fixes problems.

Hello,
First off I had suspected that most of the crashes and issues being seen in Fallout 3 were codec related after I kept receiving Libvacodec.dll errors, I just had no idea the amount of different conflicts. I'm running Vista Ultimate 64 bit and had Vista Codec Pack installed as well as the 64 bit Vista Codec Pack add on. Not only was FFDSHOW causing conflicts but so was Libvacodec and I believe some other audio related decoders. Removing Libvacodec didn't solve the issue. I added fallout3.exe and fallout3launcher.exe to the FFDSHOW exceptions list and even went as far as only allowing Windows Media Player to use the FFDSHOW decoder. Still every time I went to play it would lock up when clicking new game and the screen would go black. I hate uninstalling codecs as they are never all removed, no matter what broken codecs remain as they're locked by Windows. The only way to remove them all is to boot into safe mode and do it manually. Manually searching for 20 broken codecs really, really svcks.

Now, Bethesda what were you thinking? I mean nearly everyone I know and especially my gamer friends ALL have numerous codecs or codec packs installed on their PC's. Really sloppy approach taken here and I will definitely wait until the verdict is in for the next Bethesda release. In 20 years of gaming I have never had anything even remotely close to this happen. Most games use Bink video so IMO that's a really lame excuse. Something tells me this is audio DRM related and that's why they had to include their own decoders regardless of whether they existed on the installed system. I really hope I'm wrong.

So is anyone at Bethesda going to make this easy on us and at least name the few codecs this game uses? I'm sure I could figure out all the conflicts eventually but I thought that would be their job. Most importantly I figured they would have done their job. After hearing that this problem existed with Oblivion as well, I'm just dumbfounded! Please help us out here and name the decoders at fault so the forum Mods can throw up a sticky BEFORE the next patch. Thanks.

When I started to play Fallout 3 I had no problems till I left the vault, I searched these forums for answers and decided to install the k lite codec pack, I had no joy, then I found out about the ffdshow problems so I disabled those as stated, this I thought solved my problems till I started freezing again, so I decided to look again and relised my Realtek sound drivers where over 2 years old. I installed the new drivers and I have not frozen since. I do get the ocassional crash to desktop but I put this down to the game and not my system. What I did notice thou was I run Vista 32 and I did have a sidebar active, this actually caused a conflict in game where I would see the main menu splash screen the same width and height of the sidebar flickering on my screen ocasionally till I disabled it. Everything seems ok now, so fingers cross I have solved my problems.

TimeTraveler

That's interesting, I've recently installed Cyberlink DVD Suite v 7, and the suite's Power2Go element often runs when I open F3. No sign of Nero doing anything though (if it's still there after I reformatted one HD ...) I get BCC 05 often, also 12, 24 and 96. Something else to try!

I never had a problem with Oblivion, on this or other PCs, but F3 is unplayable. Unfortunately, since F3 installation, I now get problems with other games and in non-game use.

Asus have an Asus Probe utility which displays include CPU and MB temperature, you can have CPU temp on top and close other info displays. Last time I checked, my CPU was running at 31-32 C, not all that much above ambient temp; and it's never been very hot (40ish) with other games.

DING DING DING.... we have a winner.

Disabling AC3 and was able to run game for four hours nonstop.... saving, loading, running around.
The only time it crashes now is when it loads a new zone and that happened ONCE and loading the same zone again didn't crash.


THANKS A LOT



After installing drivers and installing K-Lite, I began to crash way more often. Did this and it works like a charm now.

I removed the codecs and now can play the game without crashing.
So how do I reinstall only the codecs I need (i.e. XVID) to be able
to watch all my MPEG4 media without killing this game???

Set a System Restore Point first, although the K-Lite has a good remover. Install the K-Lite Codec Pack, I have that and the game runs fine for me.

I installed Xvid and the latest Divx codec to play the majority of my movies and other video. Unless you play Realmedia, Quicktime, Matroska, Flash and other more scarce videos you should be alright. I guess the thing to do would be uninstall all your codecs and install them individually as you need them save for FFDSHOW and Libvacodec. Do them one at a time and play fallout for a while in between installations to make sure there's no conflicts. If you do install a codec pack make sure you do a custom install leaving out the conflicting codecs.

@CCNA I would say that's not real sound advice. K-Lite installs both FFDSHOW and Libvacodec which seem to be causing the majority of problems. Just because it doesn't show up on your PC doesn't mean it won't or hasn't for the rest of us.

K-Lite works for others it's a valid suggestion. Simple enough to uninstall it if it doesn't work.

Installing 3rd-party drivers to try and get the game working is not a real solution and just complicates matters further.

I can't even count how many times I have been troubleshooting some software on my PC, and something I did to try and fix the issue (without knowing enough about the problem) actually made it worse.

Sure, however, I have the K-LIte Codec Pack and the game works just fine for me, However, I have no other codecs or media players installed other than ConverXtoDVD.

I think it says a lot that Cryis+WARHEAD/TF2/Left4Dead/Dead Space/Far Cry 2/Spore and even Oblivion runs great with all the multiple codecs I have (or had rather) but Fallout 3 doesn't handle those at all.

It's absurd all those great high quality games work fine without me having to disable all these codecs.

After the topic containing the fallowing request/thoughts was closed with the advise to use THIS topic I repost the content...

Hello!

I would like to ask the mods if there is the possibility of gamesas telling us which exact Codecs for Audio / Video processing they used while testing / finishing the game-engine.
For me it seems to be allmost obvisious that there is one major problem, for most of the people experienceing crashs in the game. The good old merit system of directshow. Some folkz on the boards pointed that out allready aswell.

With all the multimedia applications out there, which of many tend to install there own codecpacks, many systems are just overloaded by dozens or more codecs for the same, plain purpose. Some are better suited then others, but again, those third-party applications tend to provide some real big merit-rank for there codecs.
Take Nero for example. By default merit settings the codecs provided with NeroVision are on top of the list. So whenever a application checks via directshow which codec should be used, nero codecs are one of the first picks.
Thats also the reason why uninstalling nero fixed problems for people, but I don't think its a satisfying solution after all.

I see the only real solution in just changeing the merits from codecs simply not intended to be used by Fo3's engine (or any other game engine, btw...). This way the workability of there parentprograms would still be provided, while Fallout could pick one of the codecs actually suited for the job.

If Bethesda Softworks could name the codecs INTENDED to be used (or used while in testing/development) by the fo3 engine for stable gameplay, people could tweak there meritlists and get there games running after all.


Would just take a short look at the files for beth, but mean alot to many gamers.

Thank you

Edit:
The game is running allmost flawlessly for me, btw...
I just seem to be unable to get rid of the Radio-Music bug.

As long as I stay on the pipboy after activating the radio it does not mess up but as soon as I drop it and the actualy game unpauses, the music just stops beeing played correctly and all (if anything at all, that is) that is heared from it is some crackling and hissing. When I return to the pipboy it stays like that, even after deactivating and reactivating the radiosignal. This seems to happen outdoors only, since the radiosignal from the vault's PA system worked flawlessly, have to check it back in megaton later, though.

I figured this is a codec/merit problem... and since it's the only problem I'm faceing at all, while playing the game, I am sorta eager to fix it without beeing forced to install k-lite or similar since my system is 3rd party codec pack clean atm and I planed on keeping it that way. Not that this problem is THAT important actually... just for the feeling of the game.

Sound Drivers are latest available btw.

My rig:

Motherboard:
ASUS M8R32 -MVP Deluxe
CPU:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800 (2x2000 MHz)
RAM:
2048 GB DDR-400
Graphics Adapter:
ATI Radeon HD 3870 Design Edition (512 MB)
HDDs:
160 GB Seagate Barraccuda (IDE/7200 RPM)
200 GB Seagate Barraccuda (IDE/7200 RPM)
500 GB Seagate Barraccuda (SATA-II/32 MB Cache/7200 RPM)
500 GB Seagate Barraccuda (SATA-II/32 MB Cache/7200 RPM)
Opticals:
Plextor PX-130A DVD-Rom
Plextor PX-716A Dual Layer DVD-Recorder
Sound:
Onboard / Realtec HD AC97
OS:
Windows XP Pro

I played around with a few DirectShow filters. Here were the results:



You can get the full thread here: http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=907678

Hey thanx alot for that reply *smiles*
I'm gonna check this out once returning from work.

Hope it works with WinXP Pro aswell...

If I disable all codecs the game doesn't work, is it normal?

I don't know since I'm not able to disable all of them on Windows Vista by using 'installedcodec'. It always keeps a few enabled.
I'm not sure what other codecs are required for Fallout 3 to work. Have you tried to enable atleast one codec that is able to decode MP3 streams?

Yes it's normal on XP. I was testing things out and tried it myself, no go.

THANK YOU! The MP3 directshow filter was my problem, the game must've been using something other than libmad and the ffdshow changes you posted fixed my issue, which was no music from the radio. I didn't even know the game had music on the radio till I hear Three Dog mention something like "and now back to the music".

This thread should be a message to game devs everywhere:

IF YOU RELY ON THE USER TO HAVE PROPERLY CONFIGURED, 3RD PARTY DIRECTSHOW FILTERS FOR THE GAME TO WORK, YOU ARE TAKING A BIG GAMBLE!

Most people have dozens, if not hundreds of codecs installed, many of which are buggy, incompatible, or outright broken. This isn't a media player, encoder, or converter where the user may have any number of unknown file types. When writing a game, you know what codecs you need. Just include the DLLs necessary and link to them explicitly. Assuming that a working and compatible MP3 codec just exists on the end-user's system is asking for trouble.

Thanks for all the info in this forum. Using what was here, I finally traced the problem to a set of codecs supplied by ArcSoft when I installed the Arcsoft Media Converter. After disabling those codecs, Fallout 3 plays perfectly. Now I can stop my frantic forum searches and get down to some serious playing!