I just dont get video codecs!

[MTDEW]

I might go off on a bit of a rant, so i'll ask my question first for those who hate reading long posts.

Why is it when i get a video file that WMP, my PS3 or my xbox 360 wont play, searching always results in ....step 1: Get this codec pack?
Yet, i can use a program as small and "free" as VLC player (video lan) and it plays everything i throw at it?(no codec packs ever!)

I just dont get it, what does VLC player do differently that it can play virtually anything?
Yet, my consoles and WMP11 (or 12) cannot!

I hate codec packs, ever frickin' time i get them installed and working, sure enough i install a game that freezes at the intro movie, and the solution is always "remove any video codecs you have",
Seems to me codecs are more of a hassle than theyre worth, you spend all the trouble getting the right ones installed only to have to uninstall them to do something else, then re-install them to get your videos playing again.

 

[abaez]

I'm not sure on this, but if you look at vlc's plugins folder, it basically has a dll for a large majority of the codecs out there. This allows it to play almost all codecs with no issues. WMP is not like this.

Why are you even bothering with codec packs if VLC works for you?

 

[MTDEW]

Because VLC doesnt stream to my PS3 in my living room, if it did, i'd be thrilled!

 

[Sam25]

Seriously, VLC Player just gets rids of the hassles of installing those different codec packs.
Perhaps this explains it :

"VLC includes a large number of free decoding and encoding libraries; on the Windows platform, this greatly reduces the need for finding/calibrating proprietary plugins. Many of VLC's codecs are provided by the libavcodec library from the FFmpeg project, but it uses mainly its own muxer and demuxers. It also gained distinction as the first player to support playback of encrypted DVDs on Linux by using the libdvdcss DVD decryption library." - Taken from here.

I've heard of tversity, that should work with PS3 right?

 

[MTDEW]

Yes, tversity works, but its just like WMP in that it doesnt play all files, the only thing that ever does is VLC.
(even older versions of VLC play virtually everything)

 

[MTDEW]

Originally posted by: MTDEW
Because VLC doesnt stream to my PS3 in my living room, if it did, i'd be thrilled!

Le me re-phrase that.
If video lan streamed to my PS3 and decoded the video only the fly while streaming i'd be thrilled.
Because i'd be confident i could play ANY video on my PS3.

 

[imported_wired247]

trust me I've just about given up trying to stream h.264 files to my PS3.

I download fansubbed anime in mkv/h.264, and the only place I can play it is on my computer.

I have tried transcoding to avi/xvid, which does work on PS3 flawlessly (streaming using WMP11), but I haven't been able to figure out how to get it to process the subtitles during the transcoding... so while I can watch transcoded english h.264->xvid files on my PS3, japanese h.264 files are a bust.




as for the PC, I like CCCP with media player classic. I like MPC better than VLC, it just seemed more customizable and lightweight.

 

[VinylxScratches]

I don't know if this is how PS3 works but for the Xbox 360, it downloads the codecs for you ON THE Xbox. This should be independent of if your Windows machine can or cannot play a video.

 

[Nothinman]

Seems to me codecs are more of a hassle than theyre worth, you spend all the trouble getting the right ones installed only to have to uninstall them to do something else, then re-install them to get your videos playing again.

Codecs are just the software that compresses and decompresses the A/V, there's nothing inherently bad about them. Although Windows seems to handle them extremely poorly and it's probably the fault of the developers of codecs for Windows but if you're stuck on Windows you're stuck dealing with them.

 

[Iron Woode]

all I did was use Gspot to tell me which codecs are required.

Both of my systems have Xvid 1.1.3 and FFDshow with h264 filter and an mpeg2 decoder. They play 99% of all videos I have.