Installing All Codecs
We can easily install all
codecs , but there are downsides to this, so it’s not really recommended.
What’s the point in
installing every codec found and then only using 2% of them?
Apart from simple things such as a waste if system resources, not all codecs
work well together in fact some of them cause system issues with Windows XP and
Vista.
For example one of the side
effects includes the loss of thumbnails from movie files, which can be annoying
especially if you have a computer setup as a media centre pc, where presentation
of files icons can be important rather than them all looking the same boring
icon.
It’s understandable why many of
us simply install complete a complete codec pak, especially when using WMP or
Windows Media Player, go to run a video file, WMP does not have the correct
codecs install, so it tries to download it, but of course it never or hardly
ever is able to do this, and we get the usual “unable to download codecs”
message.
Only Installing the Codecs
Needed
One of the easiest ways to only
ever install which ever codecs you need is to firstly download a free media
player such as Crystal Media player from here..
Once downloaded > Install
> Run Player
Now open the video or media file you’d want to run, Crystal will download the
required codec needed, once your happy that the file is playing ok quite the
application.
Now launch WMP and try to open
the file, as Crystal has already installed the required codec WMP should now
pick this up.
Usually we encounter loads of
media files, but most of them are in the same formats, so you may need to use
Crystal media player to download the codecs for a few media types.
There are many other ways to
find the required codecs, such as using a media analyzing application called
g-spot which analyzes media files and advises which codecs are required, but
this a more hands on approach and does require a certain amount of manual web
searching to find the relevant codecs.
The reason the Crystal media
player approach works so well is the ease of use, it’s a very easy and quick way
to only install exactly what is needed, which then reduces the chances of
getting any of the codec related issues as specified earlier in this article.
Find out more about all codecs
video players by using our site search
This article was aimed
primarily at using WMP to play media files, which generally has to be the
default media application to any one using XP or Vista media centre, but if not
using either Crystal or VLC media players offer good alternatives.
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