Help:Media help

This page is a help page

It is meant to detail processes or procedures of some aspect or aspects of The Sims Wiki's norms and practices. It is not a policy page.

Some articles on The Sims Wiki contain audio and/or video files that can be played on almost all personal computers. However, in order for those files to run, your computer must have the right software. If your computer lacks the needed software to run these files, the Internet usually contains freely downloadable programs or tools to do so.

Sound files on The Sims Wiki are typically Vorbis files, while video files are usually embedded from other websites, but some may use the Theora format. Vorbis and Theora files are contained inside an Ogg file, which are analogous to other formats used to play digital audio and video, most notably MP3 and MP4. The Ogg file container is free and open source, and is capable of delivering high quality audio and video. Most modern operating systems, however, do not support these file formats by default and require additional software to run them.

If you are having difficulty trying to play a media file, please read the sections below.

Ogg audio and video

Example sound file If you can play the sound file above, you can play Ogg Vorbis files. Example video file If you can play the video file above, you can play Ogg Theora files.

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Problems playing these files? See media help.

The easiest way to play Ogg Vorbis audio and Ogg Theora video is to use the integrated Ogg player provided by the TimedMediaHandler extension. The integrated media player works on most modern browsers.

If you wish to download these files and play them locally on your computer, you can try the following steps.

Any platform

Google Chrome (download), Mozilla Firefox (download), and Opera (download) have native support for Ogg (Theora and Vorbis). You can simply open any Ogg file using these browsers.

Windows

The VLC media player includes support for Ogg (Theora and Vorbis) files.

1. Go to VLC player Windows download page.
2. Click on the "Download VLC" button.
3. Run the setup program and follow on-screen instructions.
4. Once VLC has finished installing, you can open Ogg files on your computer using the application.

Most Windows users will also have Windows Media Player by default. Installing a codec should allow Windows Media Player to run Ogg files.

1. Go to xiph.org/dshow.
2. Download the current stable version.
3. Run the setup program and follow the instructions on screen.
4. After the Setup Wizard finishes, your player (from step 1) should be able to play audio and video files from The Sims Wiki.
5. If Windows does not automatically associate the file type with your favorite program, all you have to do is to drag/drop the file into it, or force the program to be associated with the .ogg file.

If you use Internet Explorer 9 (or later), you can also install WebM for IE.

macOS

VLC media player can play Ogg Vorbis and Theora files.

1. Go to the VLC player macOS download page
2. Select an appropriate version of the software to download.
3. Once downloading has finished, double click the disk image to mount it.
4. Copy the VLC Application to your Applications folder.
5. When the copy operation finishes, you can use VLC to play audio and video files from The Sims Wiki.

Unix (Including Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc)

Most recent free Unix systems are able to play Vorbis audio without any special installations. If you don't have any audio software installed, you can try an audio program mentioned above, such as VLC.

libtheora is required for Theora video support on Unix systems. You can use your distribution's package management system to search for and install libtheora. Like Vorbis files, many modern media players, such as VLC, can play Theora files.

Embedded videos

Some videos on The Sims Wiki may be embedded from other websites, such as YouTube, Gametrailers, and Archive.org. These video sites will generally use an HTML5 video player that works on the latest version of any modern browser. For YouTube videos, check this page to see if your browser can run the HTML5 player. If your browser does not support these HTML5 players, video playback may fail.

If you cannot play YouTube videos, please see the YouTube Help Center for assistance.

See also

• Help:Media (audio and video) on Wikipedia, where parts of this page were taken from.