Hi,

I do not want to start the good 'ol "codec packs suck" discussion. What I want to know is what I need to install to play most of what's out there. I want the bare minimum. What comes closest to a "all-in-one" solution seems to be ffdshow, but then I found out it wouldn't play my Xvid 1.0.3 encoded movies. No picture, so that solution was too good to be true. But maybe ffdshow with a separate xvid or divx install would do the trick?

Advice greatly appreciated.

//C

Are you using the latest version of ffdshow?

ffdshow or ffdshow-tryout?

Cheers, Slipstreem.

Yes, I've tried several of the newest ones, but they just won't play movies encoded with xvid 1.0.3. Sound works, but no picture. I looked at a very minimal codec package which seems to cover most playback bases. It's Codec 8.2. I have friends who swear by that one, but I am still skeptical. You can see it here:

edit: actually I'm pretty sure that pack is illegal, link removed (smok3)

//C

coreavc is a commercial solution, so that codec pack is probably illegal (other than that it looks good).

my usual suggestion is to use some mplayer based gui, like mpui;
http://mulder.dummwiedeutsch.de/home/?page=projects#mplayer

If you need DVDs with navigation then you can throw in another standalone player: VLC.

The K-Lite Codec Pack (Standard) will pretty much play all the "popular" video/audio formats.


http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_lite_codec_pack.htm


If you want to encode video/audio, then getting the FULL version of the K-Lite Codec instead is recommended.

The OP's system probably has a problem. I've never encountered a file that's unplayable with ffdshow. Last time I had xvid DEcoder installed was when video scene was new and the hacked Microsoft divx was still around. Now if only DirectShow had support for libavformat. Pretty much only other codecs you need are proper splitters and AC3Filter.