0codecsComplete codec setup guide for Windows 7⁄8

Published by & filed under Codecs.

Win­dows 8 is fin­ished and will soon be avail­able for retail sale. With that in mind it seemed a good time to write an updated guide to get­ting codecs set up for a fully oper­a­tion­al HTPC for both Win­dows 7 and 8. For this guide I’m using a new fea­ture of HTML5 which cre­ates expand­able instruc­tions. At the time of writ­ing this is only sup­por­ted by chrome and safari 6 but hope­fully oth­er browsers will add sup­port in the near future.

 

Install Win­dows
  • Select appro­pri­ate region­al settings
  • Log in or cre­ate a loc­al account
Cus­tom­ise Windows
  • Cus­tom­ise Win 8 UI (see article)
  • Install CPU-Z to check hardware
  • Down­load MB and GPU drivers and install
  • Add Media Cen­ter (win 8 only)
  • turn down UAC by 1 notch
  • set clock auto-update site
  • enable full win­dows update
Install apps
  • Get a new browser
  • install win­dows updates
  • install Secur­ity Essen­tials (win 7 only)
  • install .net frame­work 3.5 (win 8 — via features)
  • install .net frame­work 4 (win 7 only)
  • install Visu­al C++ runtimes (6)
  • install DX 9.0c (don’t install bing bar)
Setup Media Center
  • go thru first-run
Basic codec setup
  • install ffd­show
    • install dxva
    • con­fig — enable subtitles
    • con­fig — tick hard­ware acceleration
    • con­fig — set post-pro­cessing to sur­face overlay
    • con­fig — con­nect to: to directsound
    • con­fig — uncheck “apply only to spdif”
  • install LAV
  • con­fig ffd­show dxva
  • run win7dsfiltertweaker
    • set to ffd­show DXVA, ffd­show, LAV in that order of preference.
    • dis­able all except DTV-DVD 64bits
    • dis­able MF for all formats
  • dis­able MC preferred 
    • run reged­it, delete both keys from [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Decoder]
  • con­fig­ure video renderer 
    • use graph­stu­dio x64
    • set mer­it of EVR to preferred+2
  • change dir­ect­show pre­ferred codecs 
    • run reged­it, take own­er­ship of [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectShow\Preferred] and use the .reg file to overwrite
Medi­aB­rowser setup
  • install MB
  • install Vir­tu­al CloneDrive
  • install MCL2
  • install MPC-HC
    • bypass smartscreen
    • no desktop icon
    • dis­able all intern­al filters
    • add ffd­show dxva, video and audio to preferred
    • add lav split­ter to preferred
    • add EVR to preferred
Audio Codec Setup
  • install Xiph
Extra media apps and tweaks
  • install Tuner­Free­MCE
  • cus­tom­ise MC Menus
Final options
  • install CCle­an­er & CCEnhancer
  • use speed­fan

 

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