VLC Media Player – Play Videos without Codecs
VLC Player – The Codec-less Media Player
A friend of mine was asking me about codecs the other day. He told me that he had spent hours downloading a video only to find out that it wouldn’t play on his computer. He told me that every time he tried to load the video he would get a message about the player trying to acquire the correct codecs.
He said that each time it would fail, and finally he gave up on trying to play the video altogether and deleted it from his hard drive. He seemed really frustrated about this because of the time and energy he spent trying to get the video to play only to end up deleting the file.
That was when I told him about VLC Media Player.
VLC player is a media player that does not require video codecs in order to play movies. In fact, VLC can play almost anything you throw at it without any trouble. This is great to know because how many times have you been sitting there trying to get a video to play, only to realize it was encoded with some strange video codec you had never heard of.
VLC will also play files that are corrupted or broken, with the parts of the video you actually have. This can be great for testing video clips, trying to recover a movie, or for purely experimental purposes.
VLC player is a free program that can be downloaded from Videolan.org. It is a very small download of less than 10 mbs and is used by millions of people around the world.
If you are new to VLC player I would highly recommend checking it out. Or if you are just looking for a new media player or are running into codec issues this is definitely the way to go.
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8 Responses to “VLC Media Player – Play Videos without Codecs”
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I agree, this is a great program. I use it mostly as a backup when my other players give me problems. VLC always comes to the rescue!
I have had really good luck with it when I download a file that is 99.9% complete but claims it’s corrupt when you try to play it. Saves me a lot of time that would otherwise be wasted. Thanks for checking NYSportsFan!
I also use this to check and make sure the file i am downloading is worth the time
VLC is great for a no-hassle media player.
I used to use BS player, but it started having trouble playing things; I assume that it was a codec issue. I really liked that player too, though VLC is better overall for sure.
I still use BS player, but I have had some serious problems with it in the past. A couple of times it wasn’t even codec problems, but something was actually corrupted and I had to reinstall it. I still use it, but always make sure I have VLC player as a backup.
”plays everything” Man this is crap it doesnt play $#!%
Samuel: You may be running into a more serious issue that is independent of your playback software, if VLC is not working for you. As of the current release the following container formats are supported without the need for additional codecs:
3GP,[15] ASF, AVI, FLV, MKV, QuickTime, MP4, Ogg, OGM, WAV, MPEG-2 (ES, PS, TS, PVA, MP3), AIFF, Raw audio, Raw DV, MXF, VOB
vlc is great for downloading phone videos - EXCEPT volume! How do I get that on playback?