Search Results for: label/codecs

0FFmpeg LogoThe Ultimate Codec Guide

Published by & filed under . Last updated .

How data is stored in a multimedia file

Files on a com­puter (or on an optic­al disk like DVD or BluRay) need to con­tain more than 1 type of data.  A typ­ic­al movie will include at least 1 video “stream” and one audio “stream”.  Most movies include mul­tiple lan­guages and sub­titles, each of which requires an addi­tion­al stream.  Each of these streams is effect­ively a file in its own right, but they are all stored togeth­er with­in a “con­tain­er” which also starts each of them at the right time (sub­titles don’t start imme­di­ately at the start of a movie for example) and keeps them in sync as well as stor­ing meta-data about each of them – i.e. what lan­guage they are, what fram­er­ate and res­ol­u­tion the video is, and what com­pres­sion stand­ards have been used.

Video streams

Video streams con­tain only the video part of the movie.  They are com­pressed using a par­tic­u­lar sys­tem and there should be meta-data about their res­ol­u­tion, fram­er­ate, if they are inter­laced or pro­gress­ive and details of the encod­ing sys­tem used.

Audio streams

Audio streams con­tain only the audio part of the movie.  There are usu­ally mul­tiple audio streams included with the movie and each has its own stream.  They can be com­pressed in a range of ways or in some cases they are uncom­pressed raw audio.  There should be meta-data about their bitrate, res­ol­u­tion, lan­guage, num­ber of chan­nels and details of the encod­ing sys­tem used.

Oth­er streams (e.g. Closed Captions)

Many movies con­tain oth­er streams, most com­monly closed cap­tions (also known as sub­titles).  These come in sev­er­al formats, but are typ­ic­ally just text with time stamps.  They are so small rel­at­ively that no com­pres­sion is used.  There should be meta-data about their language.
[google_adsense]
Con­tain­ers which bundle all the streams together

All of the streams that com­prise the movie are bundled togeth­er and kept in sync by a con­tain­er.  The con­tain­er should con­tain (and provide) all the meta-data about each stream.  The con­tain­er also enables the col­lec­tion of streams to be stored as a single file.  The most com­mon con­tain­er formats are VOB (used by DVD) and M2TS (used by BluRay).  Oth­er com­mon con­tain­er formats on PC are TS, MPEG, AVI, MKV, WMV, WTV, DVR-MS and MP4.  The obsol­ete HD-DVD format used EVO containers.

0Xiph Codecs Logo64bit Xiph codec breaks file-type dialog in WMP12

Published by & filed under Codecs. Last updated .

In an [int­link id=“14” type=“post”]earlier article[/intlink] I recom­men­ded installing the Xiph codecs to sup­port FLAC files in 64bit Media Play­er and Media Cen­ter. One of the com­ments (my thanks to thom007) on that post poin­ted out that the Xiph codecs break the “file type” dia­log box in Media Play­er 12. Below is a work-around which restores the file-type dia­log box. The pos­sible side effects are as yet unknown, so exper­i­ment at your own risk.
… Read Full Article

2Windows Media Center eHome LogoFull 7MC codec setup

Published by & filed under Codecs, Misc Media Software, Windows Media Center. Last updated .

I’ve pre­vi­ously pos­ted sev­er­al times about codec issues on 7mc, but I’ve now got a solu­tion that is com­pre­hens­ive, fairly simple and works con­sist­ently.  With a few free codecs and util­it­ies you can have full decod­ing sup­port, DXVA, sub­titles and fant­ast­ic flex­ib­il­ity work­ing in 64bit (or 32bit) Media Cen­ter.  The fol­low­ing instruc­tions are spe­cif­ic to the x64 edi­tion, but should work just as well on the 32bit edition.
… Read Full Article

0FLAC LogoFull Flac support in Media Center x64

Published by & filed under Codecs, Windows Media Center. Last updated .

Fol­low­ing on from an [int­link id=“40” type=“post”]earlier article[/intlink], I have been con­tinu­ing to work on get­ting my music col­lec­tion work­ing in Win­dows 7 Media Cen­ter. The prob­lem I have had is that although there are codecs from xiph which sup­port play­back of flacs in 64bit play­ers ([int­link id=“14” type=“post”]see this post[/intlink]) there are (as far as I’m aware) no tag extenders com­pat­ible with 64bit.  After banging my head against a wall for ages I even­tu­ally had a breakthrough.
… Read Full Article

DownloadsDownloads: Files and Utilities

Published by & filed under . Last updated .

Note: There are no sponsored links to apps in the lists here. Everything lis­ted is lis­ted because we think it’s excel­lent or have found it useful.

… Read Full Article

2Haali Matroska logoUninstall Haali Media Splitter x64

Published by & filed under Codecs. Last updated .

There is a beta (or maybe its Alpha) installer for Haali Media Split­ter x64 out and about (for links to the installer see my pre­vi­ous post on [int­link id=“14” type=“post”]windows 7 x64 codecs[/intlink]). Sadly the unin­stall seems to be broken, which can cause hav­oc when try­ing to dia­gnose codec issues. To remove Haali com­pletely you need to unre­gister the fol­low­ing files manu­ally using regsvr32 /u filename (from a com­mand prompt run as administrator)
… Read Full Article

1Closed Captions Subtitles LogoSubtitles and DXVA in Windows Media Center 7 x64

Published by & filed under Codecs. Last updated .

Thanks to a guide on theHTPC.net I have been able to get sub­titles work­ing with hard­ware accel­er­ated decod­ing in Win­dows Media Cen­ter 7 x64.

For this sim­pli­fied guide to work you must already be com­fort­able with the vari­ous tweaks neces­sary to change the default codecs used in Media Cen­ter. Once you know how to tweak codecs (and change their mer­its) you can simply fol­low these steps…
… Read Full Article