A couple days ago, I came across a fantastic little addition to my arsenal of computer utilities. It’s a very small program called AVIcodec. What it does, is you can drag and drop into it various types of video files, which you are having trouble playing, because you don’t have the right codecs, and your programs don’t seem to be able to locate and download the correct codecs automatically. This scenario happens to me all the time. Anyway, what AVIcodec does is it just reads identifying certain file information and tells you what codec is needed to run it. It also tells you whether or not you currently have that codec. And if you do not have it, it automatically gives you a link to a website where you can download it.

It’s seriously a godsend, as far as downloading codecs is concerned. Especially using it in conjunction with Windows Media Player. That shit NEVER fetches the right codec when you need it.

Oh right, here are the file formats which this program recognizes:

1. Natively : AVI, ASF & WMV, Real (.rm, .rmvb), Ogg (.ogg, .ogm), Mpeg-(S)VCD-DVD (.mpg, .vob)
2. Others : all those handled by DirectShow (.mp3, …).

And that pretty much covers everything that I’ve ever seen, used and had trouble with. Sweet.