Codec Problems

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Terminology

Player
A movie player is the software you use to play movies. It is the visible end of the chain.
Container
Every movie file appears to the user as a container, which contains the video and audio stream of the movie (and possibly other types of streams).
Codec
A codec is an implementation of encoding the video or audio data into a stream of bytes. Every movie file must be decoded using codecs. Codecs, after installed in the system, are transparent to the user. They are automatically used by the player.
Movie file
On this page, we only discuss multimedia movie files: AVI, OGM and MKV files.
Emulators' recordings (FCM, FMV, VBM, SMV and so on) are not multimedia files and they are discussed in the FAQ instead.

Player software

Different operating systems have different software.

Note: Just installing a player is not enough. Every player depends on the codecs installed in the system, so read more.

Linux and BSD

Simply install MPlayer. It is able to play all movies released on this site.

For some H264-encoded movies, you need version 1.0pre7 or higher. Version 1.0pre6 crashes at H264, depending on encoding settings.

Windows

There are many choices for Windows.

  • Phil recommends using Media Player Classic instead of Windows Media Player.
  • Bisqwit and Nach recommend MPlayer (source), which supports almost everything although its user interface isn't very fancy.
  • TNSe recommends VLC, which handles OGG, MKV, AVI, WMV and many codecs.
  • BSPlayer is also reported to work well.
  • Nach also recommends getting the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack which includes Media Player Classic, BSPlayer, and all the codecs you'll ever need.

Mac

On Mac OSX, these players can be used:

File types

Most of our movies are of AVI type, which should work with all movie players in existence (but read about codecs below!). If your movie player only supports MPG, please upgrade.

However, some movies are encoded in OGM or MKV format. Here are detailed instructions regarding OGM and MKV.

OGM and MKV

MKV (Matroska video) is a next-generation multimedia container that is expected to surpass AVI in many aspects. OGM is another one of that kind.

Players that support OGM and MKV include:

OGM will also work with Microsoft Windows Media Player if you install OggDS.

MKV will as well if you install the latest Matroska Splitter. It can also be found at the x264 homepage just below the x264 decoder, which you will probably need to download to view the newer videos on this site anyways!

Codecs

Our movies have been encoded using the following codecs:

  • For video:
    • XVID (Official XVid)
    • DIVX (Official DivX4 and libavcodec version)
    • H264 (With X264 lib)
  • For audio:
    • MP3 (With LAME or official Fraunhofer codec)
    • Vorbis (With libvorbis)

Windows solution: FFDShow

FFDShow is a decoding filter of DirectShow for decompressing many kinds of movies.

It is recommended to install its newest version. It supports all codecs we have used.

Download here:

You should enable FFDShow decoding for the following FOURCCs (these are the ones that are found in our movies):

  • h264
  • H264
  • DIVX
  • XVID
  • FMP4

The AVI splitter filter

Strangely, some of the XVid-encoded movies require the Avi Splitter filter from the guliverkli project.

Users of MPlayer can ignore this chapter.

To install it, download and unarchive the package and use the file from Release folder if you're running Windows 9x/Me or Release Unicode folder if you're running Windows 2000/XP.

Copy AviSplitter.ax to system32 folder, C:\WINDOWS\system32

Then launch command prompt [START > Run > Type: cmd or command]

› To install the file, type: regsvr32 AviSplitter.ax
› To uninstall the file, use: regsvr32 -u AviSplitter.ax

In the end, you should receive a message saying that your file was successfully (un)installed.
After that, you can try again to replay the movie that didn't work.

Get Firefox!CodecProblems last edited by Truncated on 2006-12-21 11:05:45
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