Users who swear on video players that rely on system wide codecs on the other hand can use a software program like Video Inspector that analyses video codecs and displays the information needed to play the video on the computer system.

The tool can be integrated in the Windows Explorer context menu to display information about the current video file directly. The alternative is to use the interface to browse the computer system for supported video files. It covers the popular AVI, Matroska, MPEG I, MPEG II and QuickTime containers which means it cannot identify other video formats like wmv.

Information about the video codec and audio codec are displayed immediately after loading a video into the software program. Various information about the video are displayed including the codecs used. Probably more important than that is the visual aid that is telling the user if the proper codecs are installed to play the video. A download button is present in case they are not to immediately download them to the computer system (using codecsdb.com).

Video Inspector comes with a few extra tools and options that include displaying all installed audio and video codecs, burning or converting the video to DVD, extracting the audio, splitting the video or changing the FourCC.

There has been some bad blood lately about products published by KC Softwares as they started adding Relevant Knowledge to their software programs. Relevant Knowledge actively monitors a user’s browsing and purchasing on the Internet. Many spyware and antivirus companies therefor classify Relevant Knowledge as spyware.

It has to be noted that Relevant Knowledge is only included in the full builds of the program. A lite version is provided on the same download page that does not include this component.

Viable alternatives to Video Inspector are G-Spot, AviCodec, Media Info or Codec Installer.

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Installed Codec (via Shell Extension City) is another fine NirSoft tool that displays all installed codecs of a Windows 2000, 2003, XP or Vista system in a table. All meaning all Codec drivers and DirectShow but not binary codecs which are used by some applications like MPlayer.

The software lists the name of the codec, its installation path and file, the company that developed it and if it is enabled on the system. Each codec in the list can be disabled which has the effect that this codec will not be used to play the supported multimedia files. Excellent if you want to make sure that a specific codec is playing certain videos.

Removing some of the installed codecs can be achieved by disabling the codecs first and checking if the videos still play fine. If that is the case I would temporarily move them to another directory and if nothing bad happens delete them from the system. Most of the codecs installed on my Windows XP system are from Nero 8 which is kinda strange because I have not installed all those additional converters and tools that come with it. The codecs seem to get installed nevertheless.

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I think it’s ok as long as you can validate that the executable has been send by a friend. I would still scan it using an online scanner though. The software supports a lot of different audio and video formats, all the important ones are included like mov, flv, mp4, mpg, avi, swf and wmv.

Audio / Video to Exe (via Instant Fundas) can process multiple files at once and either convert them into a different format or create one executable for each multimedia file that has been added to the interface. The output size is roughly the size of the audio or video file.

I did encounter several errors while testing the application. It seems to have trouble with large files. The conversion of a 1.7 Gigabyte video to the executable format succeeded but I was not able to play it afterwards. Some videos were not playing correctly as well after the conversion.

The only advice that I can give is to try it out for yourself and see if the conversion worked for the audio or video files before you upload them or send them to a friend.

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I recently discovered that a so called additional codecs package for SMPlayer, and MPlayer obviously, is available and can be installed to support additional video and audio formats. These codecs will also be installed as so called binary codecs straight into the SMPlayer folder.

The major problem that I ran into was that I was not able to find a list of the codecs that are installed this way. The only possibility that I can think of right now is to search for the filenames in a search engine which will reveal their purpose. The codec package adds 63 new files to the codec directory. I probably would only install it if I would encounter a video that I could not play properly though.

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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.

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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.

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The media control plugin for Windows Vista media center adds functionality to it including support for the mentioned codecs and features that they support like multiple audio streams and subtitles. Take a look at the most important features below:

• Switching embedded audio and subtitles streams while playing a video: works with AVI, OGM, MKV
• Switching between external subtitle files (.SRT, .SUB)
• Switching between FFDShow presets (audio & video)
• Setting and loading bookmarks inside a video
• Real fast forward (and rewind) exactly like in the TV module (with 3 different speeds)
• Switching and setting post-processing filters in FFDShow (video filters only)
• Separate application to assign keyboard/remote control shortcuts to the commands and the MCML pages of the plugin

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The first thing that caught my attention was that all my NTFS (Windows file system) hard drives were accessible which is really great. I had an entry on my list of things that I wanted Ubuntu to do and this was one of them. I tried the installation and it worked fine. After selecting a username and password and some general settings like country I had the choice to automatically resize the partitions for Ubuntu or do it manually.

I decided to use the manual approach because I already created the partitions yesterday using the Kubuntu partitioner. I was able to select my Linux partition (ext3) with 30 gigabytes and my linux swap partition with 1 gigabyte. The installation began automatically and did not take long. After rebooting the system and changing the boot sequence again I was able to boot into Linux, Vista or XP using Grub the bootmanager.

My internet connection worked right out of the box, no installation was required. This was great because I needed to take a look at the Ubuntu documentation.

The first thing that I noticed was that many programs were already installed on my new Linux system. Some of them, like Firefox and Open Office, were applications that I was using on my Windows operating systems as well. The only thing that was really missing (at first glance) was support for mp3 files and other restricted formats.

Installing additional packages is slightly more complicated than in Windows. You may use the command line to install software or use a package manager that offers a selection of available software. I decided to use the package manager and took a quick look at software that I wanted to install.

I found Thunderbird, the same e-mail client that I was using in Windows and decided to install it hoping that it was possible to use the Windows profile in Linux as well. Thankfully the software is categorized and you can also use the good search to find something that you are looking for.

I decided to take a look at the ubuntu documentation to find out what I needed to install to be able to play mp3 and other files such as divx movies.

• ffmpeg
• libxvidcore4 (multiverse)
• gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
• gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse
• gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
• gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse
• gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
• gstreamer0.10-gl
• ibquicktime0 (universe)

Please note that you need to add the universe and multiverse repositories under settings, repositories before you may install some of the above codecs.

Installing and using Ubuntu was quite easy. The only difficulties inexperienced users might encounter will be the partitioning process and the installation of additional files. Most programs that I use on a daily basis are already preinstalled, if you use your computer mainly for office you are set to go without installing additional packages.

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