- WHY DO I NEED A VC1 CODEC HOW TO
- WHY DO I NEED A VC1 CODEC INSTALL
- WHY DO I NEED A VC1 CODEC ZIP
- WHY DO I NEED A VC1 CODEC FREE
Player are also based on Directshow.īelow is an example of how an MKV works with Directshow in the background. Windows Media Player is the standard (which is also used in MCE and VMC) but many other players including MediaPortal, Media Player Classic (MPC), Zoomplayer and BS. The important thing to know is that most players use Directshow so if you can get it working in one player it should work in any. The final result of all of this looks like a flow-chart called a graph. In essence it uses lots of small modules to process the file from reading the file, through to decoding and processing the streams and then onto outputting the stream to your video or sound card.
There is no real need to understand this in depth but a little understanding won't hurt…ĭirectshow is the technology which makes most video players on Windows work. So hopefully now you understand that the question that should be asked is “how do I play the streams inside an MKV file on my system?” These however are functional things and do not effect getting the files to play. MKVs for example support chapters (so you can fast-forward through like a DVD) but AVI doesn't. The only other thing to mention about containers is that they each add their own functionality or come with their own problems.
WHY DO I NEED A VC1 CODEC FREE
Wikipedia provides a good table showing which ( Comparison of container formats - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) but this is not too important unless you are encoding your own videos. There is a further level of complexity in that different containers can only contain specific streams.
WHY DO I NEED A VC1 CODEC ZIP
Where as you can put any files inside a ZIP file, it is normally audio and video streams that are inside media containers. Where media containers differ from ZIP files is their media specific contents.
WHY DO I NEED A VC1 CODEC HOW TO
Media containers are similar in that you need something that tells your PC how to get at the contents stored inside the container.
WHY DO I NEED A VC1 CODEC INSTALL
Since XP, reading the contents of ZIP files has been incorporated into the operating system, but in previous versions you had to install something like PKZip or WinZip in order to use ZIP files. If it contains an xls file you will need Excel to make any use of it, if it contains a jpg file you will need a picture viewer application. So this makes the “how do I play an MKV file on my system?” question the equivalent of “how do I use the contents of a ZIP file?” The answer to that question obviously depends on the contents of the ZIP file. Something similar follows for media containers in that they can actually contain many different items inside of them. I always compare containers to ZIP files in that you can basically put any file you like inside the ZIP file. MKV files are simply containers (as are AVI, MP4, EVI, MPEG and many others) and contain many different things. This guide is largely for those using Windows Media Player (WMP), Windows Media Centre Edition (MCE), Vista Media Centre (VMC) and MediaPortal (MP) but the concepts are generic across all players. I am not saying that codec packs are bad but they can install a million and one things that you might not need and installing multiple codec packs can lead to all sorts of conflicts and confusion. Hopefully by reading this guide you will understand (a) why the first question is not the one you should be asking and (b) how to choose what you actually need rather than just installing a codec pack. "why does a file playback fine in WMP but not in Vista 圆4 Media Center?"Īll these questions are linked together but we need to take a step back and go through some of the basics in order to understand how this all works.“how do I get hardware acceleration working for x?”.“how do I play an MKV file on my system?”.