Sorry not sure what I am downloading when I install a codec pack. They do look like they support windows media player as the player will act differently after I install one. But I would like to get some of the new video formats to work with Real Player. The one I need the most is MKV. Also it would be nice to play ISO files in the Real Player. I did figure out I could rename ISO to MPG and real player would play that but many times it was real choppy. That may be because my computer specs are not the greatest. So you may want to ask, why use Realplayer? The reason I use that is because Realplayer will let me add almost all types of video formats and edit the tags to sort them out by title, artist, album, year, track number, category, genre, length, and many other ways to tag and sort them. I have not been able to find any other player to edit those tags for file extensions like flv, mov, vob, rm and more. Only now I think Real Player must be giving up on adding some of the new file types. Was hoping maybe there is a codec pack that works with Real Player to play some of the new video formats like MKV. Anyone know of one or am I only stuck with what Realplayer offers?
What you have in an MKV, is an H.264/x264 video codec and probably an aac audio. If you install ffdshow , it will decode your H.264 encodec videos(MKV). However, RealPlayer is a dummy, and doesn't know what to do with the extension MKV. Just rename to AVI, and with ffdshow installed,it will play just fine. If you have Nero, or some other software installed, I would just try to rename to AVI first and see if it plays without installing ffdshow(you might have the right video splitter/decoder installed already).I have CoreAVC, and I can let either it or ffdshow play the MKV(renamed to AVI) in Real Player. VLC also allows you to edit info about your file, might not be what you're looking for...:
Thanks for some great help. I have asked on other forums some questions like this one and never got any good answers. By changing the MKV to AVI, I was able to play the file on Real Player. And I never knew VLC had a libray you could edit. I had a old version is why. I could not find the list you showed so I downloaded the new version and there it was. VLC could use a TAG for Catagory like Real has so you can sort by movies, music, tv shows, anime, ect. Or a way to make and rename the Libraries on the left column would work also. And it seems they have some information like "Date" that you can edit but you can't use that tag to sort your videos by. Still this is a way better playlist then most players, as most don't let you edit and sort most file types.
That's why Afterdawn is no. One Glad you figured it out! I don't use Real Player, but curiosity/challenge made me try work it out. Cheers!
Ever thought about trying XBMC ? It will allow not just all that tagging/sorting, it automatically downloads info, cast...and plays about any format out there... Well, believe it or not, I renamed an ISO to mpg, and real Player plays it...a bit slow at ffw, but it plays...also, couldn't get the subs to show up.
I have tried so many media players without much luck at all on taging and sorting all media file types. I never even thought I'd give Realplayer another chance but after many download that was the best I could find for what I wanted. Some players want you to just give you a picture to look at. But with a thousand videos on a computer, looking at every video picture would dive me insane finding the one I want. But I must admit I have never even heard of XBMC. I'm going to go try it out now. If you want to see what players I have tried here is a link to some of my thoughts on them. http://myweb.cableone.net/jondavis/#audio1 That is about a year old now so some of them may be working better now with new updates.
XBMC was designed as an application for XBOX. Now is available for desktop also, MAC/Windows...It might be what you are looking for. http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=Music_Library Now that I am reading more about it( I have it installed on a couple old XBOXs), it might do a great job at sorting by tags and all that but not sure if itself is capable of tagging. Just worth having a look anyway, it plays everything, including ISO, or even rar archives. What I like about it, I just let it connect to Imdb, and get all the info-plot, cats, genre, cover art...
Just passing thru, anything with 'codec' in a thread title catches my eye. Plus out of the corner of my eye i saw The Obama Deception in that webpage link a few posts up. I have all of Alex Jones' films, but the Obama Deception is a very good film if that's the only one you have. His latest one 'Fall of the Republic' is excellent, more people should watch them. Also there's Jesse Ventura's new show Conspiracy Theory on the TruTV channel. (I'm in the UK but have ways and means to watch such things). You may want to have a read of this one ~ http://forums.ebuyer.com/showthread.php?t=38300 as i update that thread daily with articles/info i come across each day. My way of getting the word out about injustices that will very soon be affecting all of us much more than they have previously. I don't post to that thread that often, i edit posts and add in new articles until i hit the posts character limits so only create new posts once the limit is reached. I post such topics over at that site as such topics don't fit within Afterdawn's remit, which is a damn shame as a site as public and as large as Afterdawn would be a fantastic platform for getting the word out from, but i don't (mis)use my Moderator powers for such things. The US and the UK are making huge noises to attack Yemen but i'll bring my reply back to codec packs before i get angry about such things Anyways, I personally use only one codec pack, the K-Lite Mega codec pack, have used this for donkeys years across many machines without issue. As to players i only use VLC player and Media Player Classic (MPC) which comes with K-Lite. MPC plays MKV files effortlessly, as does VLC. I moved to/stuck with K-Lite as many years ago codecs were very hit and miss, so when K-Lite came along i no longer had to play the 'i wonder what codec this particular video file needs' game. In linux i use the VLC player as my main player, it works very well indeed. Plus there's gxine but i don't find it as good as VLC. But i digress.. What i can't help with is tagging, i had never even heard of/thought of tagging video files, and i detest (with a passion) tags on MP3 files, they drive me batty. Well the only tagging i do is for Alex Jones' daily radio show, i download the 4hr podcast each day and i wrote a linux script to auto split the file into smaller chunks and re-tag the files as i play the podcast on a 1GB Sony MP3 player that only recognises files if they have tags. Just in case it's of any use, the script is here ~ http://forums.ebuyer.com/showthread.php?p=882087#post882087 I've been using XBMC on old type xboxes for a couple of years now, but as i say i cannot abide tags so it's not something i've messed with in XBMC; XBMC is coming along in leaps and bounds on the PC platform, though it might be too resource heavy for older machines (don't know if it is, i only use it on a Dual Core and a Quad Core, and if it is slow on older machines, that would be annoying as old type xboxes are essentially Intel P3 733MHz PC's with 64MB of RAM; it could just be that the newest skins in XBMC on the PC platform that won't run on older machines, XBMC itself might well run ok). So to finish, i have my movies split over 4 drives on my main PC and there's so many that it's a pain finding them. I spend most of my time in Puppy linux on a Dual Core machine and the Quad that holds all my movies is only ever switched on when encoding is done or when movies are to be watched, but the Puppy machine is on all day every day so one easy method i came up with a few days ago was to knock up a basic linux script that mounts the relevant movie shares in Puppy, and runs a loop that basically lists all the movies to an output file. Then i can run a simple grep command on that file and see where a particular movie lives. Then i just remount that particular share and copy that movie over the network (or to a USB drive). This as i say is because i don't like leaving the media pc on all the time. Sorry i can't help with the video tagging, maybe you can find some hints in the link i posted above though.
@creaky, Isn't that something else? A program runs just fine with a P3 processor and 64MB RAM on a gaming console, but then it needs **GBs of RAM and triple cores on a PC...Same with the games, same games available on a 360/PS3 run on <300MB ram, and needs 2+GB on a PC. I think the coders are just lazy, don't try to optimize the software because they know the user can compensate buy buffing up the hardware. I just tried XBMC on my laptop as we speak(2core), and it is a bit sluggish(((...not as smooth as on my XBOX anyay.
I would normally class such things as lazy coding but we'd better whisper it in this instance in case they throw a fit and decide to cease the coding . I don't use XBMC on the PC's too often as it's annoying to use with only a mouse and no remote control. XBMC works great in XP and Windows 7, it's a remote i'm lacking. But as i say i tend to spend most time in Puppy nowadays, i only even use Windows 7 as that's what i put on the HTPC in the lounge, it could just as easily be Puppy.
Thanks for sharing, never heard about the Fall of the Republic. Might have to find and watch that one tonight. Not sure why you hate tags though. Without some tags my music would be impossilbe to find anything. And that is what is happening to me now with all the video downloads. As you can tell I don't just watch movies but many political news, shows and documentries plus I have lots of music videos and concert videos and then there is all the anime, tv shows, fan films ect that I download. Just some file name on my hard drive is not helping. I need something to sort them all out. And something that will handle all the file extensions is a must. XBMC has a nice look to it but seems limited on how it sorts and plays things. Can't say for sure since I've only barely tired it out. Still better then most players out there. Sometimes I like to play my audio music mixed in with music videos. Not sure if I can sort and play videos and music together without making a playlist in XBMC. XBMC does look great for getting movie information. More programs need that and also once all the information is in the program to be able to sort by all those fields.
I'm big on documentaries too, i do have thousands of movies and documentaries but am strict with my folder structures so know where everything is; tags have (for many years) driven me to distraction as lots of my *cough* downloaded *cough* music is tagged so haphazardly that for years i've found it easier to remove all tags. Which makes certain MP3 players unhappy which then means manual creation/manipulation of tags; hence why i can't stand them, and why i wrote that script for my podcasts. I have way too much stuff to retag everything, there's even a thread here or on that other site where someone has clever methods for mass tagging of albums, but there was no mention of movies/documentaries in there so it's not worth me digging out a link.
I haven't explored all the options in XMBC, and don't use it much for music, but what I liked is the cast DB. Plenty of times I couldn't remember the name of a certain movie, but I knew one cast member. I Searched by actor, and there it was. As for tagging- creaky and I would get along just fine!!
