Best Free Codec Tools

by Johnny Karp 15 August 2008 9 Comments

Welcome to the Freeware Mission, only a few days left until the glorious ending! I have my video player and audio player installed, but I need codecs, that’s pretty obvious. I’m going to show you which codec pack I chose to install and another very useful freeware program.

The codec pack that I chose is CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack). After installing it you can play almost any audio or video file, it’s spyware and adware free and it comes with two very good media players: Media Player Classic and Zoom Player.

You can download CCCP from here, it’s free!

The freeware program that I was talking about is CodecInstaller. It’s a very useful program: it can analyze a media file to see which codecs are needed to play it, provides a list of the codecs installed in your system and you can unistall or disable any of them and last but not least it helps you to download and install the codecs that you might need.

You can download CodecInstaller from here, it’s free!

Four episodes to go! Stay tuned for the final dash towards the finishing line! The Freeware Mission will succeed!

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If you have any trouble with this software just leave a comment, I’ll help you out!

9 Comments »

map51 said:

While trying to install “Codec Installer” my Avast Virus Scanner stopped the install as “Codec Installer” had adware. What should I do in this regard.

# 19 August 2008 at 1:26 am

Johnny Karp said:

@map51
Indeed, Avast interprets it as adware. I scanned it with a few specialized antispyware products and it turns out clean. I guess that’s why I installed an antispyware program too. Avast! is an antivirus, the antispyware part is less developed, a lot of false positives there.

# 19 August 2008 at 1:48 am

Shicomm said:

A codec pack could be just fine but if you hit trouble…
You could seek for the best of both ; a good player with a codec sollution.
GOM is just that.
It’s a very stable player and it takes care of any codec issues.
Free as well

# 5 September 2008 at 12:04 am

Johnny Karp said:

@shicomm
Yes, GOM is a very good player indeed and it takes care of the codec issues. The only thing it does not do is provide a list of the installed codecs and helping to unistall codecs, and I chose CodecInstaller for that. The CCCP codec pack is a very good one because it doesn’t install dozens of codecs, but just those few that are really important.

# 5 September 2008 at 12:49 am

zerostress said:

Well, I do not know if it is the best codecs pack. I am partial to the K-Lite codecs packs (full or lite versions) myself.

The Gspot program included is pretty good at giving information on codecs.

There is one thing that I know though is that Media Player Classic has two securities advisories against it and is End-Of-Life (no further development).

Use instead Media Player Classic Homecinema, the interface is exactly the same and it work fine.

# 5 October 2008 at 12:26 pm

Bilgisayarınız İçin 72 Ücretsiz Yazılım | catlakses.com said:

[...] Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP) – Media Player Classic de dahil edilmiş. [...]

# 23 January 2009 at 10:20 pm

Paulo said:

Instalei o CCCP mas no fundo videos que saco no Pro. Lphant veem codificados se falam tanto neste codec por nao concigo descodifica-los?Gostaria que me ajud.

# 11 March 2009 at 12:45 am

Paulo said:

Tenho o VLC – Media Player Classic – Nero 7- Divx e não concigo descodificar filmes que saco no programa Lphant ,podem me ajudar?

# 11 March 2009 at 12:51 am