I downloaded a .webm file from the Opera website

www.opera.com/medua/video/1060/introduction.webm and got a 8 MB file.

GSpot said unknown file and unknown MIME type. VLC said unrecogznied. MPC said cannot render. Zoom Player said crash.

How can I play these new kind of file?

You need additinal tools. You can find them here: http://www.webmproject.org/tools/

Btw, VLC could run webm files but not in 1.0.3 version (1.1.0 support them but it doesn't work under Win 98).

You need additional tools. You can find them here: http://www.webmproject.org/tools/

Btw, VLC could run webm files but not in 1.0.3 version (1.1.0 support them but it doesn't work under Win 98).

I tested them under Win 98 SE, no Kernelex.

Nothing worked.

The codec installation wizard appeared to work but none of my direct show media players would play the file. All of them said unrecognized or something to that effect.

I wasn't sure how to verify that the wizard worked and that my system actually recognized the new codecs.

I tried the playwebm.exe file, which I assumed was a player. It crashed with some kind of run time error.

I tried the other makewebm.exe program and it would not start. It sad something about a driver not functioning, which I have seen other XP programs. do.

The material on the web site left me unclear if you had to have a media splitter. The language of the site spoke as if all you needed to do was install the codecs. It did not say you have to install the splitter. But the page did reference the Haali splitter on http://www.webmproject.org/tools/#other_webm_tools

I followed that link and inferred that the media splitter support for webm doesn't work with Win 98. If you need both, 98 might not ever play these files.

Perhaps you'll get some luck renaming the webm files to .mkv as the webm container format is  matroska  AFAIK. The codecs needed are on2  VP8 for the video stream and Ogg-Vorbis  for the audio.

Correct me if I am wrong I haven't looked too closely into it.

And I am thinking that MPlayer will soon be able to play WebM files if it doesn't already. GUI versions are generally 2k only but the command line MPlayer should run on vanilla 98 I think.