You sit down to watch a movie, press play, but there’s no sound. How frustrating! If you ever find that a movie has no sound, here are the steps you need to take to fix it.
Whether you’ve downloaded the movie for playback on Windows or Mac, or are streaming through a platform like Netflix or Amazon Prime, this is how you fix a movie with no sound.
1. Restart Your Device
This is the oldest trick in the book, but you’d be surprised at how often it works. Simply turn your system off and on again. For a TV, don’t just put it into standby. Turn it off at the plug, wait 10 seconds, then turn it back on.
On TVs, you can often restart specific apps like Netflix or Amazon Prime individually. Look within the app settings or help section for a button that lets you restart.
2. Update Your Device
While most systems will keep themselves updated automatically, it’s good to perform a manual check for updates when experiencing any issue.
It’s easy to update your Mac or update Windows. TVs will vary by manufacturer, but look in the settings for a firmware update. Remember that platforms like Kodi on the Amazon Fire Stick need updating too.
3. Check Your Audio Connection
Try playing something else to determine whether the problem is with your playback device or the movie itself. If other things don’t have sound either, it’s probably a problem with your sound connection.
First, make sure you don’t have the device muted—who knows, perhaps you accidentally sat on the remote. Second, check your audio cables to ensure they haven’t come loose. If you’re unsure which is which, unplug all of the cables and then plug them back in firmly.
If you’re using HDMI, this transmits both video and audio. HDMI cables can be bought cheaply, and can be prone to failure, so switch yours out for a new one to see if it fixes the problem.
4. Download the Movie Again
If you downloaded the movie then you can try downloading it again. While it’s unlikely, especially if the entire movie plays fine visually, it’s possible that the file got corrupted somehow, which can happen if your connection to the server was interrupted.
If you are having internet issues, here’s how to fix a slow or unstable Wi-Fi connection.
5. Watch the Movie on Another Platform
Let’s say your Amazon Prime movie has no sound. You could try finding that movie on one of the many free movie streaming sites.
That won’t be possible if it’s a Netflix original or similar, since those are exclusive to that service, but most movies are available on multiple platforms. You might find this fixes your problem if the audio issue is with the original platform or their upload of the movie.
6. Use a Different Playback Program
There are a million and one different media playback programs available. They don’t all work the same way. Some only support certain video files or don’t run on every platform.
The best video player is VLC. This is because it’s free, open-source, cross-platform, and most importantly supports a huge number of video formats out of the box.
The chances are if a video has no sound on another video player, it will work just fine on VLC.
If you can’t download another media player to your TV, you can stream from your computer to Chromecast.
7. Download Audio Codecs
To quote our article detailing everything you need to know about codecs, a codec “is an encoding tool that processes video [and audio] and stores it in a stream of bytes”.
Codecs help reduce the size of files and then decompress them when needed. There are many types of codecs, each using different technologies for various applications. Some examples include WMA, MP3, and XviD.
Since there are so many variables when it comes to codecs, it could be that your device or media program doesn’t have the necessary information to correctly play the movie. This can result in there being no audio.
Ideally, you should follow our advice above of using VLC because it supports lots of popular codecs out of the box.
If that still doesn’t work, download the necessary codec. If you don’t know what that is, view the movie file’s properties on a computer to find out. Still uncertain? Download a decent codec pack like K-Lite and the chances are you’ll find what you need.
8. Change the Speaker Configuration
The movie might be encoded to play on different channels that your device cannot support. For example, it’s not uncommon for downloaded movies to be in 5.1 surround sound, which is designed to play different parts of the audio from different speakers.
If you don’t have a surround sound setup, you might end up hearing only one of those tracks (like just the background noise and no dialog) or even nothing at all.
As such, you should adjust your device’s speaker configuration to be set to stereo. This will play all of the audio tracks through the same channel.
The exact method to change this will depend on your device and playback program. You might need to do it for both the device and the program.
For example, on Windows 10, press Windows key + R to open Run. Input mmsys.cpl and click OK. On the Playback tab, find your speakers, click them, then click Configure. Select Stereo and click Next until the wizard is finished.
Instructions will be different for other operating systems or TVs, so check your manufacturer’s help pages for information.
The steps will also change for each media program, but if you’re using VLC then you should use the top menu to go to Audio > Stereo Mode > Stereo.
9. Watch With Closed Captions
This is a last resort, but if you can’t fix the audio and are desperate to watch the movie, then you could view it with subtitles or closed captions.
While subtitles only provide the dialog in text form, closed captions also give a description of music and sound effects. Closed captions are designed for those who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other streaming services offer subtitles. YouTube even has the ability to automatically generate them. If you’re watching on a platform that doesn’t already have captions, here are the best places to download free subtitles for movies and TV shows. Many of these services also offer closed captions.
Other Things to Try When Your Movie Has No Sound
Hopefully the problem of no sound is now fixed and you can enjoy the movie with glorious audio. However, if you’re still having issues, and are trying to watch the movie on your computer, here’s how to fix your computer speakers.
Read the full article: 9 Fixes for When a Movie Has No Sound
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