Problems with codecs

[Gagarin]

My windows 7 system is near perfect, however some movies I have to watch in WinAmp, some in Windows Media Player becouse they do not work in each of them.
Also, I tried to install atrac at3 plugins, but for some reason Goldwave gives me plugin error message.
Is there one pack with windows 7 neccessery plugins so all will work?
Where to start?

 

[doyama]

Download SMPlayer for Windows and get rid of those other junky players

During the install it will ask you if you want to download additional codecs. When you choose components to install just make sure the "Binary Codecs" option is selected. There's not much smplayer can't handle especially with the included codec packs.

 

[Originality]

Zoom Player does that too, and it's easy to access the codec downloading tool at a later date if you want to update.

Otherwise there's VLC that doesn't actually use codecs (video player for n00bs, literally), and then there's the CCCP codec pack which comes with Media Player Classic and has many fans in various parts of the internet.

There was another thread a couple weeks back about the "best" media players, including a few suggestions for what "pros" use. Feel free to search for it - I'm too lazy, since I use whatever works for my anime.

 

[Lacius]

I highly recommend VLC Media Player if you're looking for an all-in-one solution, which appears to be the case.

 

[Gagarin]

And what about at3 codecs?

 

[ecko]

try klite codec pack.
comes with media player classic, which is generally good.
and a crapload of codecs

 

[FAST6191]

Gah I dislike multimedia setups that are not my own. Also gah this gets annoyingly complex- lots of people, lots of ideas, lots of embedded hardware, lots of code and lots of options available all makes for a lot of mess in multimedia world but you have PC which means life can be good.

re: klite codec pack and similar packs more codecs often doing the same thing- there is little need to install xvid, divx and ffdshow unless you are doing comparison tests or something (or are encoding professionally and have to worry about licenses) not to mention cases where there are conflicts between them .

Back on topic there are possibly two main requirements for a codec pack with those being playback and encoding although encoding in recent years has been kicked to standalone programs so I often ignore it unless my hand is forced by a program someone just has to use.

Next up some players are tricky and might come with their own splitters, filters, decoders and whatever else. This in theory at least is where you might get to play a video with one player that works with another (although things like VLC use inbuilt methods) if there is not a more general method for your machine (or that general method is overridden). Inbuilt is nice but it has a history of not interfacing with various things as well as you might like as well as potentially being somewhat slower either due to the interfacing things, being based on older code (trying to merge code lines is no fun unless you are specifically aiming for it). WinAmp and Windows Media Player have traditionally found themselves in the unusual bundled/preferred methods camp and paid the price for it, reworking WMP has been achieved at various points in time but I consider it more hassle than it is worth (about the only nice thing I have to say about WMP assuming you do not care for visualisations and a library option is that some of the inbuilt audio filters are quite nice).

To this end unless you want to do encoding I usually suggest installing CCCP, spending a few minutes configuring FFDshow (resize to fit screen, add any post processing.....) and if your machine does not play all that well with H264 then consider CoreAVC (unless you are using silly high resolutions with options to match most half modern machines can handle it though). A proper setup pieced together by hand will be able to beat it but the same could be said of a lot in computing but few people do it. When encoding I say find a lossless method to export to from your editor of choice and encode with a proper program if your editor does not play well with outside programs or if it does then use one of those.

If going manual you have a few more options but I will avoid that for now (you want splitters for the various formats, maybe some filters, a subtitle renderer, a player and codecs capable of doing damage at the top levels of the various video standards out there)

Spoiler: some waffle on windows 7 and multimedia APIs

.
As for errors without investigating I am unsure (when encoding I tend to opt for uncompressed/known working lossless compressed and fairly bulletproof programs not to mention I have not set up a windows 7 encoding machine just yet) but I should perhaps mention VfW and directshow along with all the various changes that went on in multimedia world between XP and 7 (sound being a major one).
VFW aka video for windows (and some matching audio stuff) was an old method of multimedia and programs interacting but many simple programs (if it has a video output method chances are it uses this- I see it in games, emulators and more) as well as some better ones still use it where directshow (or more accurately an API within directshow) was introduced to interact with video files. If I am going to spin unix type machines into it as well it gets even worse but let us not go there right now. Windows 7 much like newer versions of any OS have a nasty habit of forgoing brilliant support of older APIs which has been known to include AT3 but it could be many other things. Also assuming you actually mean AT3 who uses that any more? If you mean AC3 aften might be the thing you want to look at instead (although I rarely do proper AC3 any more either). This says nothing of 32bit and 64bit as well- granted there is a half nice virtual machine in 7.