Lessfeet » CODEC

H.264 The Winner

Mark — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 04:08:46 +0000

Today MPEG LA announced that the H.264 CODEC will be royalty-free in perpetuity.

What does this mean?

The new HTML5 needs a standard for playing video. Mozilla wants the open-source Ogg Theora. Apple wants H.264. Google wanted H.264 and change to VP8 their own CODEC because of H.264s encumbrances. Now that MPEG LA has made H.264 free there are no impediments to using it for HTML5.

Why should we care?

We are talking about standards here. Without standards you would not know which wrench to use on your car. There would be no number 2 pencils to use when you take a test. We need to finish work on this standard so the Internet can move forward.

Lets hope all the parties agree and this is the last word on this subject.

Play Any Media

Mark — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:55:50 +0000

Yes, you can play any type of media file (MP3, Quicktime, MPEG4, Real) with “Windows Media Player“. All you need is a CODEC. The “K-Lite Mega Codec Pack ” installs pretty much all of the known CODECs, even the one’s that most of us are not familiar.

Sometimes a file will not open but if you save it to your desktop and then open it should work. (You may have to choose WMP to open it.) If it isn’t in this CODEC pack (CAUTION) do not download one from the site that is suggesting it. It may be malware.

This does not include server-side applications like “Flash” and “Silverlight“

Note: Do not install “Media Player Classic” that is included in CODEC Pack. If you do it will be the default player and you want WMP.