I’m normally not a friend of codec packs because they tend to install many codecs that are not needed on most systems and could pose compatibility problems with codecs already installed on the system. Windows Vista on the other hand misses some essential codecs that can be quite easily added with the Vista Codec Package which can be customized during installation. That is right, unlike other codec packages you can select to install all or only some of the codecs offered.

Most possible conflicts have already been dealt with and the settings have already been altered for best results. The Windows Vista codec package does not ship with a media player which means that no file associations are being made. Just fire up your favorite media player, I recommend VLC or Mplayer, who automatically will use the codecs that are installed on your system.

Windows Vista Codec

All the important codecs are in the package, including xvid, windows media video 9, ffdshow, ogg and ac-3  acm. The codec package can be installed in Windows Vista and Windows XP and runs on 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the operating systems.

Installing a Windows Vista Codec Package can have direct impacts on system performance, stability and multimedia output. It is therefor recommended to be very cautious when installing a Windows Vista Codec Package.

Windows Vista Codec Alternatives

A viable alternative is to install a media player that comes with so called binary codecs which can only be used in this program and cannot be accessed by other applications. This has the immense advantage that those codecs cannot “pollute” the system and cause stability and performance issues which windows vista codec packs can.

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Please note that the following method to convert DVDs into Avi files works only with DVDs that are not copy protected. I will take a look at the possibilities to convert copy protected DVDs in the coming days. The freeware that we are going to us is called Auto Gordian Knot. It is a very simple utility. You basically select an input file from the DVD that has been inserted into your dvd drive.

You will find a so called IFO file on most DVDs and that is the file to choose normally. Sometimes you have to choose a VOB file instead. As a rule of thumb you should view the VOB files that you want to choose before you actually select them to avoid errors such as selecting a menu to be included in the rip.
Once that is done the contents will be read and you have to choose which audio tracks you want to rip as well. You may choose up to two audio tracks, the first audio track is always preselected.

If subtitles are present on the disc they can be included as well, same principle as with audio tracks. After that you define the output size of the movie, the default value is 2 CDs but you may choose anything from 1/4 of a CD to 2 GB.

Size is up to you of course. The smaller options such as 1/4 or 1/2 of a CD should only be applied to single tracks such as  episodes of tv series for example. It does not really make sense to add five episodes of a tv series and make the output size 1/4 of a CD which is only about 200 megabytes.

AutoGK has many advanced settings which are not that relevant if you want to quickly rip a DVD. You might want to take a look but you have to know what you are doing in order to change the settings there.

I especially like AutoGK because you may rip DVDs in one go easily. It takes between three and six hours normally depending on the source files and settings that you have choosen. Faster computers will probably need less time.  Oh, all codecs needed in the converting process are included which is another great plus.

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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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