Fanfic recs

[selenak]

Got a lovely surprise from wychwood today and afterwards a less lovely one from my laptop, which refuses to play it. Ah well. I think I know a way to persuade it.

Meanwhile, quick recs:

Alias:

"Gifts from the Sea", a lovely Emily ficlet which has her meeting a certain someone she should have met. Spoilers for the fourth season.


Harry Potter:
Among the many things I liked about HBP was the fact it fleshed out the Black sisters, Narcissa and Bellatrix, somewhat more, especially Narcissa, who was little more than a name before. This resulted in some good (and spoilery) fanfic:

"First Class Follower"

American Gothic:

Too little fanfic online, and nothing very recent, but now and then, there are exceptions, like this Matt Crower future fic. Spoiles for the entire lone splendid season the show got:

"Persephone"

Comments

[wychwood]

Whee! And also, dang!

I hope you like it, as and when you can make it work... If it's a codec problem, there's the DivX codec on the second CD, which may help.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Alack, alas! I just tried that. On two computers. I also tried extracting the thing from the zip file. No go. Not on the other CDs, either. All computers in this house don't like them, or vice versa!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

My cure for most "unplayable" video files is videolan, www.videolan.org

It'll handle a lot of files that nothing else will touch, and plays DVDs regardless of region without any need to change a computer's region code.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I'll go there, thanks for the tip!

[wychwood]

OK... I had a sudden thought, which was that possibly Windows didn't like the discs because I burnt them in Linux, but one I did for myself works fine in both OSs, so that can't be it. Also, the other person I sent them to is having no problems at all; he's using Linux, but the CDs are identical, burnt in the same session and sent to one or the other of you depending on which name I happened to write on the disc.

With the zip file, you have to put both parts of the file together - that's the .zip and the .z01. I think there are instructions on the disc, let me know if I'm wrong. But am I right in thinking that you're saying none of the discs work?

Is your computer recognising the CDs at all? Can you open the file window to look at the contents? Can you copy the files onto your computer? What exactly happens when you try to play one?

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Yes, none of them work, though the computers (I tried two) recognise the content of the zip file (whereas they don't recognise the contents of the others). They just won't play it.

I tried the copying, but then it tells me that the file I'm trying to copy is damaged.

Will try further. Wah!

[wychwood]

OK, some more random thoughts...

1) What OS are you using? Windows, I assume, but what version?
2) The CDs are working, you say, but what exactly shows up? A file with a filename but in an unrecognised format? Or no files? Or something else entirely?
3) Are the machines (or, at least, the CD-ROM drives) more than three or four years old?
4) Are the codecs on the (I think) second disk visible at all? Or the readme / instruction thing that I think was there too?
5) Can you play .avi or .DivX files usually?