There are many codec packages in the wild to fill the blanks that Microsoft leaves out from WMP and VMC. K-Lite is one example of these packages that are out there. Many times, however, this package and others have a tendency to create more problems than they solve.
Aseem Kishore over at his blogging site, Online Tech Tips, recently had a need for a codec package for VMC. After some searching, he found what is called the Vista Codec Package. In the end, he felt he found a very nice codec solution:
… you can fully configure each aspect of the included codecs, but in truth I have not needed to tweak anything. So I really do suggest everybody who owns Vista gives this a try, it really is one of the coolest solutions to a very annoying problem I have found in a long time.
The complete blog can be found here.
The codec package can be obtained at the Vista Codec Package homepage The one item that immediately caught my eye was the following:
When dealing with codecs, more does not equal better.
Having the least amount on your system is the best configuration.
This is exactly what the Vista Codec Package does for you.
which I have to agree with completely. It is very probable that many of the packages, i.e. K-Lite, try to do too much and as result cause more problems than they solve.
So, if you have Vista and are in “codec hell”, try this package out.
July 29th, 2008 at 7:10 am
CCCP (http://www.cccp-project.net/) is another one of those “complete package” and my personal favorite. It has a separate tool called Insurgent that tells you what codecs are on your computer right now so can you uninstall all of them before installing another solution to prevent any potential conflicts.
July 29th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
We’ve had this listed on our site for the past year. It’s the only solution we use for videos, it will play avis, flv, quicktime, even Hi-Def videos. Excellent work.
July 29th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I have used this on my 32-bit Vista machine and it hasn’t failed to play anything thus far. The only problem I encontered was trying to skip forward through a h.264 encoded mkv file using Windows Media Player.
Other than that - it’s been flawless.
July 29th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Thanks for the link back! Awesome site you got here, I’ve been reading it for the last hour! Glad I found it.
Aseem
July 29th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Another blog post on MediaCenter codec packs is this one on Chris Lanier’s Blog:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/archive/2007/07/21/1046591.aspx
Works very well for me. I’ll check the VMC Codec solution. I fully agree with less is more. Before I read Chris L’s post I was trying out all kinds of crazy codec packs like K-lite, CCCP and with various other apps on top. I can’t recommend that. The fddshow works quite well on it’s own and you avoid getting conflicts between codecs that are trying to decode the same streams.
July 30th, 2008 at 9:46 am
I personally install K-Lite Mega Codec pack on all my machines and never have I had a problem. Nor have I ran into a file I can’t play.