Thursday, February 08, 2007

Guide: Those damn videos that just won't play (Win XP)

There's so many types of different videoformats out there, I just can't wrap my head around which one's what, so... I stopped caring.

The thing is, it's just not that easy. So I thought maybe I'd come up with a guide, so you won't have to smash your keyboard the next time your newly downloaded porn movies won't work.

Like I said, my actual knowledge about how all this stuff works is pretty limited, but I do know of two alternatives that's enabled me to stick with just one player that works well.

The first one comes in the shape of K-Lite Codec Pack, which is my first choice. This comes in three different 'packages', whereas if you're just looking to playback videos, the Standard is your way to go. This includes the playback software Media Player Classic, which so far has played all my media. Even though it might look like crap, it works like a charm, and leaves a very small footprint. (Which translates to 'uses little memory and CPU')

The second alternative is VideoLAN (VLC), which works to my knowledge just as well as The K-Lite pack. It seems to have a small footprint as well, and the only downside I can think of compared with Media Player Classic, is that dragging the timeline works much more smoothly with MPC. On the other hand, VLC is multiplatform and works with Windows, OS-X and Linux/Unix.

The best part of it all: They're both free! Enjoy...

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