Are there any good standalone media players that come with all the codec stuff installed as part of the application?

I've got my new PC and would prefer not to foul it up with those random codec packs that install heaps of dodgy s***, but there's so much stuff in xvid now that I need to be able to watch it.

I know there's things like VLC player and Mplayer, but do they still require all the codecs to be installed independently?

Thanks

I'm no expert but I just install latest ms media player + divx std. Seems to play most porn, er I mean media just fine.

vlc = no more codecs....evar

Sweet, I took the mind-bogglingly difficult step of just installing VLC and testing it out and it played the first thing I threw at it, so hopefully it'll play the rest

From memory you'll still need to install "real alternative" and 'quick alt' if you wish to play those vid types in vlc but should play everything else thrown at it.

I use Mplayer for all the s*** that doesn't work with Media Player or Winamp, it hasn't failed me yet

vlc is awesome

its a shame as well the mob that wrote the media player for the xbox havent done a pc version

coz its gold too

I use mediaplayer classic + ffdshow. Together they play most everything I need even flv files from youtube and the likes. ffdshow even has an encoder in it so you can encode all that home made porn too, well the version I have does anyway.

VLC yo

The only thing MPC + ffdshow couldn't play for me was hidef x264 stuff

I'm not sure as I've tried any x264 stuff, got a link to something free like a game/movie trailer? Just to make sure we're trying to watch the exact same thing

\/\/\/ pfft single window I gots your ffdshow pwnage right here.

last edited by whoop at 00:37:08 24/Oct/06

Standalone VLC is for the everyday standard divx crowd, and simply works for most the average stuff. I've seen a lot of hd flicks flat out not play on stock vlc though, and a other random glitches with different codecs.

Failing that ffdshow and vlc/mpc/heck even windows media player is all you need. Any jackass that suggests installing anything else (apart from real/qt alternatives) is completely nucking futs. Most 'codec packs' come with ffdshow and/or the library ffdshow is based around AND THEN pack alot of other s***e with it that ffdshow/libvacodec will already handle.

In short, ffdshow = win, no extra dodgy s***, don't even need a media player other than the windows one, no multiple copies of divx and if it doesn't play your wierd format off the bat l2configureitcodecpackdouchebags http://eggsampler.com/ffdshow.jpg

Mplayer and VLC are both pretty much the best/only standalone (no external libraries needed) players.

Almost every other player is probably based off their core technologies. FFdshow is based off ffmpeg. In fact further research shows that VLC and Mplayer are both based off FFMpeg so its probably a question of which interface you prefer.

Offtopic: I use DefilerPak. The creator throws together FFDshow with some of the more obscure filters and fileformats that FFdshow won't show on its own. So yeah most of the gruntwork is being done by FFdshow but its not like he's throwing in wasteful things here. If you're downloading Anime or anything like that some of these formats/filters are quite necessary

What's included?

* ffdshow: Rapidly making codec packs obsolete. Plays almost everything.
* Haali Media filter: Supports the Matroska, MP4, and OGM A/V container formats.
* VSFilter: Supports a wide variety of subtitle formats.
* DivX ;-) Audio: Just in case.
* AC3 XForm filter: Makes life a little easier for folks with external Dolby Digital decoders.
* HDTVPump: Support for HD/ATSC transport streams.

P.S. if you're playing x264 content (High Def s***) then by all accounts you can't go past CoreAVC in terms of performance. From all accounts whereas other decoders struggle on anything but the top of the line dual-core systems CoreAVC can run on machines a fair bit older. Apparently the old Beta versions can still be found, are fully functional and are installed with Quicktime Alternative.

last edited by Denny at 12:45:08 24/Oct/06

VLC for the win.

real alternative and quick alternative are also used. And the best thing about VLC = satellite installs. unzip and play.

DefilerPak needs to be updated, it hasen't been in almost a year.
At the moment I use DefilerPak with the latest FFDshow installed over it with Realalt, and Quicktime 7.1
I haven't ever had problems playing videos, but I can't play .ogg audio files. Does anyone know what they are and what codecs I need to open them?

Edit: Here is a link for .ogg codecs
http://www.illiminable.com/ogg/

last edited by Lynx at 13:05:57 24/Oct/06

* ffdshow: Rapidly making codec packs obsolete. Plays almost everything.
* Haali Media filter: Supports the Matroska, MP4, and OGM A/V container formats.
* VSFilter: Supports a wide variety of subtitle formats.
* DivX ;-) Audio: Just in case.
* AC3 XForm filter: Makes life a little easier for folks with external Dolby Digital decoders.
* HDTVPump: Support for HD/ATSC transport streams.

Why bother? ffdshow already will do the mkv, mp4 and ogg containers, will already use a wide variety of subtitles, and by gosh darn, it has a few forms of divx audio too! Hell, ffdshow will even handle your hd content for you! And since trog has a beefy enough c2d there, any x264 should play totally fine. It plays fine on my brother's p4 2.4, too.

So in reality, you could just install ffdshow, not get doubles of things, and only install a dolby splitter if want to use your dvd decoder to handle the surround sound audio.

but I can't play .ogg audio files.

PS, Lynx, click the vorbis button when installing ffdshow, or go into your ffdshow audio decoder config and make sure it's actually doing it and not disabled. Then uninstall defiler pack and just use ffdshow.

I downloaded some h264 1080p trailers from apple's site last night and they played just fine albeit a tad slow on my crappy old video card but the little ffdshow video/audio decoder icon in the systray came up so I figure it's ffdshow that is doing the decoding. Are you sure you're enabling ffdshow's decoding of x264 natslovr?

I know i had to do something to get x264 working, maybe it was just turn it on? :-)