How to play RAR video files
Sometimes video files are sent having the RAR extension. RAR is not video format. It is a compression technology to shrink and archive files. If the file is very large it is sometimes broken up into multiple files which make up a multi-volume archive.
A multi-volume archive will come with extensions like .rar, .r00, .r01, .r02 etc.
To play the video files on your computer you will need to reconstruct the archive into one video file.
A popular choice to decompress RAR files is WinRAR. However I’m going to show you how to decompress RAR files with one of my favorite tools 7-Zip.
You can download and install 7-Zip from here. One thing I really like about 7-Zip is that’s it’s FREE and open source software. It is incredibly easy to use and handles just about any type of compressed files you can throw at it including ZIP, GZIP, TAR, RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS.
Locate the video files on your computer. In the case of multi-volume archive all you really care about is the file with the .rar extension.
Right click on the .rar file and select 7-zip\Extract Here. 7-Zip will begin to combine all of the smaller files into one large video file and place it into the current folder.
You can then play the video file with your favorite video player. if you’re having a problem playing the video, especially if you are using Windows media player you likely don’t have the right codecs installed on your computer. I recommend you download the VLC media player. It will play just about anything you throw at it.
daryl ebinum said,
March 12, 2008 @ 8:10 am
the same review is at Http://techlodown.blogspot.com
Levon said,
July 24, 2008 @ 2:29 pm
Hey thank you very much for the help on the .rar decompressing… I downloaded The Dark Knight and got pretty freaked out seeing that it was in an unknown format… again thank you much.
Sentry said,
July 28, 2008 @ 8:56 pm
Thanks bro, this really helped me out. Much appreciated.
Anonymous said,
September 4, 2008 @ 9:55 pm
this one too good thanks a million
Scott said,
September 7, 2008 @ 5:04 pm
Thanks!
Cat said,
October 24, 2008 @ 5:09 am
This worked a treat. No issues. Thanks so much.
meengener said,
November 25, 2008 @ 7:38 pm
just wondering if by using this technique i will be able to view a movie on windows media player? i seem to get just audio and no video comes through. or sometimes it says to download a codec???/
thanks for any help you can throw my way
Karen R said,
November 27, 2008 @ 10:27 pm
Now, I may have missed it but does this work on Macs? Or just windows?
This RAR issue has been driving me crazy and I am so happy someone thought of redirecting us here.
Please let me know if it doesn’t work on Macs, what does?
Chris said,
January 3, 2009 @ 11:48 am
The file I downloaded is a multi-part file, but there isn’t just one file with the .rar extension. There are 25 files that are part1, part2, etc, and they all have the .rar extension. Then there is one file that says it’s system info, and shows no extension, and one file that has the extension .sfv. How do I proceed?
Harsha said,
January 5, 2009 @ 7:37 am
Hi,
This was really useful. I had a .rar file with 8 files of type avi. And now, I can play all of them in any video player.
Thanks,
- Harsha
LC said,
February 10, 2009 @ 8:19 pm
You rock my world. Thanks!
Anand said,
February 12, 2009 @ 4:38 am
even iam tyrying the same thing. but the problem the moment i click on ‘extract files’, a snall box comes which requires a password. I am unable to understand it. Please help.
swopnna said,
February 13, 2009 @ 1:47 am
thank you so much for helping me out ….you cannot imagine the broad smile on my face when I could extract the .rar file….thanks a zillion..
Anup said,
February 19, 2009 @ 5:55 am
I downloaded a torrent of sarah connor chronicles from the above site. it has got all rar files. I rar file for one part. I have got 25 files like that. even if i extract a single file, it shows me the same episode. could you please help me with that? I have 7 zip as well, but after extracting it with it, the file doesnt plays, it gets an error, “cannot render the file”
Please mail me if possible….
thanks,
Anup K
bhisham said,
February 20, 2009 @ 1:55 am
Thanks for very useful information on rar extension
Smithy said,
February 24, 2009 @ 3:56 am
Hi there.
I’m getting the same problem that Andand was getting… I get a small dialog box that comes up asking for a password when I try to extract a RAR file. Can anyone help please?
peter said,
February 24, 2009 @ 9:31 pm
How do i do this on a mac
SUDIP said,
March 5, 2009 @ 3:12 am
even iam tyrying the same thing. but the problem the moment i click on ‘extract files’, a snall box comes which requires a password. I am unable to understand it. Please help.
chris said,
April 22, 2009 @ 1:19 pm
to those who can’t acces the .rar file because a box pops up asking for a password. well that file is password protected. you will need to get the password from the creator of the file. if you can’t get it then your S.O.L
shan said,
April 25, 2009 @ 12:18 am
thanks,its working well
Rockjock8 said,
May 4, 2009 @ 4:24 am
thanks for pointing us in the right direction. much obliged.
Cadz said,
May 7, 2009 @ 4:00 pm
Perfect. Thanks a million!!
Sonia said,
May 7, 2009 @ 7:44 pm
im having the same problem, in windows media player I only get audio no video….help!!!!
i used winrar to extract the files
webmaster said,
May 7, 2009 @ 8:10 pm
@Sonia Download VLC media player and try to use it to view the video.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
NeXs said,
May 8, 2009 @ 11:58 am
actualy a few playerss like bsplayer pro support playing compressed stuff without prior extracting them, since scene rules forbid any compression to be used on movie content ..so it’s actually just one big file, split in parts..just drag the first rar/zip file onto bsplayer pro (or vlc, with the right plugin installed) and it’ll play just fine..
Saranya said,
May 17, 2009 @ 11:41 am
I installed it..still i am unable to play the movie. it says ” un known code ” or cannot read the code.. i installed ” a missed call ” movie. Unable to watch it .getting the same error as before.
After installing 7-zip, it extracted the files.still the same…
Bia said,
May 27, 2009 @ 11:51 pm
Thanks a lot! I finally learned how to deal with it!
sticky mad said,
June 18, 2009 @ 3:08 am
thanks a mill had terrible problems with films coming down in file ext and ended up deleting them but this worked a treat you learn something new everyday thanks for the advice.
Danial said,
July 2, 2009 @ 12:43 am
thanks budy..it worked I downloaded 7-zip n i think it’s best…thank you
Zebah Singh Alfred said,
July 4, 2009 @ 12:01 pm
Thanks my friend…it works….perfectly fine..!!!
Anonymous said,
July 14, 2009 @ 10:36 am
Thank you so much
Mike said,
July 16, 2009 @ 6:48 pm
As others have said, thanks for the RAR tutorial! I already had 7-Zip but, as I rarely get RAR files, forgot the steps to apply. Many thanks!
Anonymous said,
July 21, 2009 @ 4:36 pm
You are the first person I have found that makes sense with this stuff!! Thank You
Rexter said,
July 28, 2009 @ 2:01 am
Thanks a lot!!!
Really, if there is nobody to make profits of a product it comes out so much better!
the player is awesome. I was amazaed how much better the quality was over windows media player.
7-zip rocks
Ali said,
August 7, 2009 @ 10:01 am
I use to delete or avoid downloading movies with rar files, but not anymore.
Thanks a lot, much appreciated.
jjmj28 said,
August 26, 2009 @ 8:56 am
Thank you very much for the advice on using 7zip. now i can watch .rar files well.
blair said,
August 31, 2009 @ 11:32 pm
You are awesome!! These are great, simple instructions!!
meziggy said,
September 7, 2009 @ 1:29 pm
thanks for the tutoring. it works flawlessly.
komal said,
October 4, 2009 @ 1:01 am
Hi.. dude its working really great… awesome. But, my picture quality was poor any suggestions……. Thank you very much.
heba said,
October 12, 2009 @ 12:11 pm
thanks so much this really helps me
Haaris said,
October 12, 2009 @ 7:08 pm
Dear,
That was great…Hats off…it was real easy…Thanks a lot…
Regards,
Haaris111@gmail.com
Pulak said,
October 15, 2009 @ 2:37 pm
Thanks friend it really worked…..
Zoey said,
October 16, 2009 @ 4:38 pm
Thank you so much. Your instructions were so easy to understand and follow. Now excuse me, I need to go download a bunch of .rar files I was never able to view before. You rule!
Ynah said,
November 5, 2009 @ 4:13 am
Hi!
How come in my archive there is no R01, R02,R03, ect. files.
All of them is RAR. how can i play that??
Please reply. Thanks.
sai said,
November 9, 2009 @ 12:19 pm
Awesome Information on this blog, Actually I ahd lot of videos that i had download form a site, but that i unable to ply, why i dont know,
But u had given a good information bossss
Thank for creating such useful information on this blog
TheOneTheOnly said,
November 17, 2009 @ 12:41 am
yet again somethings can be learned easily,, thank-you
Ruchi Gupta said,
December 3, 2009 @ 11:11 am
Please solve the problem about the passwords
Vishwas said,
December 11, 2009 @ 3:14 am
Dude thanks for this infi …………..was really helpful………appreciate it……..
Angad said,
December 12, 2009 @ 11:10 pm
Thanx Man…!!!
Thanx a ton….!!!!
pankaj kumar patel said,
December 30, 2009 @ 10:46 am
nice job it really worked
thanks for suggestion I got rid of the RAR issue
saakaar said,
January 5, 2010 @ 12:27 am
thanks dude.. really gud directions..
Jon said,
January 9, 2010 @ 6:08 pm
The file I downloaded is a multi-part file, but there isn’t just one file with the .rar extension. There are 25 files that are part1, part2, etc, and they all have the .rar extension. Then there is one file that says it’s system info, and shows no extension, and one file that has the extension .sfv. How do I proceed?
7-Zip keeps extracting the files into an .img format which I can play. Can you help? It’s a movie i downloaded for my kid and he really wants to watch it.
Joe Fox said,
January 14, 2010 @ 2:01 pm
So easy to open and play the files, downloading video from piratesbay.org where this is most needed, better source but temporarily offline is eztv.it which needs no conversion after dowloading the torrent file. I use utorrent as the download client, sometimes vuse
EastCoastSurf88 said,
February 27, 2010 @ 9:26 am
thanks bro mucho appriciatO you have saved the day.. now i get over this hangover watchin surf videos i downloaded that were.rar files!
sulav said,
February 28, 2010 @ 11:57 am
it is asking for some kind of password???? i dont understand.
marko said,
March 3, 2010 @ 2:56 pm
thnx man u are great
Deepak said,
March 20, 2010 @ 1:08 am
Thanx mam wow its to gud……..
guss said,
April 3, 2010 @ 12:19 pm
there is much easier way… use ilivid RapidPlayer from http://www.ilivid.com
guss said,
April 3, 2010 @ 12:25 pm
just to explain, ilivid RapidPlayer will download the files you wanted for you, uncompress them and you will start watching the video few seconds after you pressed the download button… just like streaming…
Anonymous said,
April 15, 2010 @ 7:59 am
thanks i got it
Thownsparks420 said,
April 22, 2010 @ 2:59 pm
Thanks whoever posted this, I’ve had others try to explain it but theres always like at least ten to fifteen steps…thank you very much for making it as simple as possible. I always avoided these download types cuz I didn’t know how to use r00 files…you couldn’t have explained it any better or made it any easier…
grewal said,
May 17, 2010 @ 12:59 pm
thanx man
Chris said,
May 22, 2010 @ 12:17 pm
you can also try http://www.openrarfile.com/open-rar-file
if you are only trying to open a rar file without downloading software
Furniture Packages Bulgaria said,
June 1, 2010 @ 10:26 am
Its really great. thanks for it……………..
harry
Furniture Packages Bulgaria
AZEEM said,
June 17, 2010 @ 8:22 am
thank uuuuuuuu verrrrrry much its relly work i love it?!
gabi said,
June 22, 2010 @ 4:09 am
Thank you sso..much for the advise, appreciate you taking time to give suggestions…
gaurav arora said,
June 26, 2010 @ 12:23 am
nice, 1st time i found a very simple procedue on the net. thanks bro
shahid said,
June 27, 2010 @ 1:29 pm
Hi there.
I’m getting the same problem that Andand was getting… I get a small dialog box that comes up asking for a password when I try to extract a RAR file. Can anyone help please?
arsaln said,
July 16, 2010 @ 3:07 pm
thnx bro