I have been using Windows 8 for several weeks now and recently I ran into a problem while trying to play some video files. I shoot a lot of video with a Panasonic HD camcorder and all files are .M2TS files that the Video app on Windows 8 can play, but not Windows Media Player.
This would result in an error that Windows Media Player encountered a problem loading the playlist, whatever that means. However, for some reason, Windows 8 tries to open the video file in Windows Media Player by default every time. I had to manually continue right-clicking the files and choosing Open With to use the Video app.
In this article, I’ll quickly walk you through how to change the default video player and photo viewer in Windows 8. By default, the Photos app in Windows 8 opens most image files, but if you want to use a different program, you’ll have to manually change it.
Change the default video player in Windows 8
Change the default video player in Windows 8
The easiest way to change the default program for a video file is to right-click the video file, click Open With, and then click Choose Default Program.
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You can then select an application from the list, or click Advanced options if the program you want to use is not listed. This is the easiest way to change the default program for one specific file type, but if you want to change the default player, for example, for all types of video files, it will take a very long time.
Instead, you can go to Control Panel and click on “Default Programs”.
Then click Set Default Programs.
Scroll down the list until you reach “Videos,†which tells you how many defaults are set for that app or program.
Go ahead and click on “Choose defaults for this program” and you can see exactly which file types are associated with which program in Windows 8.
As you can see, .m2ts files are set to Not Selected as their current default. If you would like the current program to open files, just check the box and click the Save button. This will then link the current program to that file type. So if you want to opt out of using Windows Media Player, check this box and click Save.
For photographs or any other application, the procedure is the same. Click Photos to see which files open in the program by default, and check or uncheck the box depending on which program you want to use.
If you want your photos to open in another application, select the defaults for that application, and then select the check boxes for the file types that you want to automatically open with another application. For example, if I wanted the Windows photo viewer to open photos, I would choose the defaults and check all the boxes for the file types it supports.
That’s all! You can easily control which files open with the “Default Programs” feature in Windows 8. Enjoy!
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