That’s fine and often works, but it does not always resolve the underlying problem. Codec Toolbox is a free beta program for Windows that can check the system for codec problems.

All that a user needs to do is to start the portable program and select the Check problems of codecs option in the pull down menu in the main interface.

codec problems

The program scans all installed codec information and displays errors related to them in the text box on the same screen. It will for instance notify the user if a codec is missing on the hard drive that is referenced in the Windows Registry.

At this time, there is no option to automatically resolve the codec problems from within the software. This means that the user has to repair the problems manually. For a missing file and reference in the Registry this would for instance mean to delete the entry in the Registry.

codec Toolbox can do more than just scan the system for missing codecs. It can create a list of all codecs installed on the system, and read and change the merit value of codecs. The merit value is used by applications to select a codec if multiple are able to play a media file. The codec with the highest merit value is picked automatically by the applications.

Codec Toolbox comes with command line parameters as well to perform the supported operations. The program is still in development, and users will likely notice that in one form or the other. It is for instance not possible to change the size of the program interface, which makes it incredible difficulty to read the outputs of the program.

The portable program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows. A download is provided at the developer forum. Alternatives are Codec Sniper, Codecinstaller or G-Spot.

Now, the MPEG LA standards organisation responsible for the codec have answered the concerns of business and consumers by announcing the standard will remain royalty-free forever.

In the past some companies have decided to cash in on the popularity of standards they introduce, as was tried with JPEG, and this news will come as a relief to software and hardware makers building the standard into their programs and devices.

The announcement also means that browser makers, Opera and Firefox, who would not have money to pay such a royalty, can safely introduce H.264 video support into their browsers, following Microsoft, Google and Apple.

In the breaking story from Business Wire, it was said that…

MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as “Internet Broadcast AVC Video”) during the entire life of this License. MPEG LA previously announced it would not charge royalties for such video through December 31, 2015 (see http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf), and today’s announcement makes clear that royalties will continue not to be charged for such video beyond that time. Products and services other than Internet Broadcast AVC Video continue to be royalty-bearing.MPEG LA’s AVC Patent Portfolio License provides access to essential patent rights for the AVC/H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) digital video coding standard. In addition to Internet Broadcast AVC Video, MPEG LA’s AVC Patent Portfolio License provides coverage for devices that decode and encode AVC video, AVC video sold to end users for a fee on a title or subscription basis and free television video services. AVC video is used in set-top boxes, media player and other personal computer software, mobile devices including telephones and mobile television receivers, Blu-ray Disc™ players and recorders, Blu-ray video optical discs, game machines, personal media player devices and still and video cameras.

 This is excellent news for everybody going forward.

Source : NeoWin and Engadget

Open the Windows Control Panel and click on Sounds And Audio Device Properties. Select the Hardware tab from the new window and take a look at the Devices entry. It lists, among other things, Audio Codecs and Video Codecs. Select one of the two and click on the Properties button in the lower right corner.

Another window opens called Video Codecs Properties and you can take a look at all installed codecs by clicking on the Properties tab. While this is a nice way to see a list of all installed codecs on a system it does not help much if you need more information, for example the location of the codec on your hard drive.

I’m normally using a software called Avi Codec to compile all relevant information about installed audio and video codecs on my system. The main benefit of this tool is that it lists the path of the codec on the hard drive which makes it easier to locate and remove unnecessary codecs.

A much better solution is to check which codec is missing to play a video and install only that codec. I reviewed several programs that could do that but never on that was as easy to use as AVIcodec. You can load files or entire folders into AVIcodec by dragging and dropping them into the main program window or using the buttons to open the files and folders this way.

The videos will be analyzed as soon as they have been added and the codec used for video and audio is displayed. This is giving you the main information about the codecs of the files. If you select a file in the list detailed information are displayed at the bottom and this is where it gets interesting.

The three rows File, Video and Audio list information about the file. The important information however is the last word in the video and audio row which either says Supported or Unsupported.

Supported means that a codec that can play the audio or video is installed on the computer. Unsupported however means that no codec was found and this is the reason why the video is not playing properly.

A click on the WEB button on the right side of each line loads a website that has the codec. Just download and install the codec and you are good to go and can view (and hear) the video without problems. Links are leading to the official websites of the codecs as far as I can tell which means there is no (well almost) chance that you will download a virus or trojan.

The main purpose of Installed Codecs is to be able to find out which codecs that have been installed lately are interfering with other codecs that have already been installed on the PC. This can be done by sorting the codecs chronologically and disabling those that have been installed lately.

Some understanding of video and audio codecs is helpful as well because it would not make sense to disable audio codecs when analyzing a video playback problem.

Installed Codec does not have to be installed and can be run from any place. It takes a few seconds before the list of all installed codecs is populated. A right-click opens a menu with options to enable and disable codecs, save items and create html reports.

The location of the installed codec is mentioned in the properties as well which makes it easy to delete it instead of just disabling it. Installed Codec is compatible with Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Vista.

Installed Codec

As I said All In One Fix ships with several patches for known issues. The real difficulty here for the end user is that he has to select which patches he wants to apply. There is no initial scan of the system environment, not sure if this would be even possible to do in this case.

The fixes that can be applied are the following:

Audio Codecs Missing

• MPEG1 Audio Codec Missing – This component will un-register the default mp3 filter that comes with your Operating System and then re-register it: “l3codecx.ax”
• LPCM Audio Codec Missing – This component will un-register the LPCM audio codec and then re-register it: “mlcom.ax”

Video Display Problem

• Remove Bicubic resize filter – Included in many codec packs ex.: Nimo – Can cause no video to appear, or video that is upside down or mirrored.
• Remove XviD filter – This removes the XviD DirectShow decoder filter. Many codec packs ex.:. Nimo feature Nic’s build of the DirectShow filter that steals playback of DivX FourCC’s. Unfortunately, most of these build can not playback all DX5 series video and the result is the start of files not playing, video appearing green, or other artifacting.
• Remove G400 filter – This filter is part of several codec packs, including Nimo’s, and causes video to play upside down. It should only be installed on systems using Matrox G400 cards in the first place.
• Remove DivX Anti-freeze filter – This filter is included in codec packs (inc. Nimo) – May cause some instability with DivX Codec and Dr DivX as well.

Player Off Limits

• Sometime, when opening the DivX Player, it goes out of the screen but it is in the taskbar. This component will bring back the player in the middle of the screen. The player needs to be close before you run this fix.

Burning Engine Update

• This will update the DivX Player Burning Engine to the latest version.

Ordinal Error

• If you receive “ordinal 2250 can’t be found in PX.dll” error when starting the player, this component of the fix, will solve the problem.

DivX Player Reset

• This option will delete all the preferences already set in DivX Player. This could fix some bugs like runtime error, player freeze at startup etc…

Connection Diagnostic

• If you have connection problem, problem to download VOD, to create an acocunt or to connect to your VOD account with DivX Player, Please select this option.

  This will run some tests on your computer and create a log file (connect.log). The file will be placed on your desktop. Please include this file when reporting your incident.

Web Player Fix

• If the web Player is already installed on your computer but you are still prompted to install it, choose this option, it should fix your problem.

Explorer Crash When Open A Folder

• When opening a folder containing DivX or XviD .Avi files under some specific configurations, the thumbnail generation crash Windows Explorer.

  This option Disable the Thumbnail generation.

DivX not in the list of codecs

• Choose this option if DivX is not in the list of the Codecs available from your favorite encoding application

Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 Bug

• The program Easy Media Creator 9 from Roxio don’t seem to be able to decode the DivX or Xvid file properly. If you apply this fix, the DivX Decoder should work properly.

  DivX needs to be reinstalled after you apply the patch. You dont need to uninstall, simply download the installer from the following link and run it.

  http://download.divx.com/divx/DivXInstaller.exe

Change the Skin Of DivX Player 6.x

• Choose this option you want to change the Skin of DivX Player. This is useful in case you are using the 800×600 resolution and missing some part of the default interface.

  There is 2 choices for the 800×600 display mode, 800×600 or Grayout

Read More:

All In One Fix

A drawback is that you install many codecs that you do not need and that could interfere with codecs already installed on your system. A more elegant approach would be to scan the media file to find out which codes have been used to encode the file. One freeware that is able to do this is Media Info.

Media Info loads the media file and scans it for codes that are needed to playback the file. It displays extensive information about audio and video streams, the bitrate used to encode the movie and the names of the codec(s). A great feature is a link to the website of the codec used where it is possible to download it and a link to a video player website that is able to play the file without downloading the codec seperately.