Recently, Storm codec was introduced by most of my friends and they told me that so far the Storm Codec is the most complete video codec. Let's see how true it is...
K-Lite Codec was used to my best option BUT there are some disadvantages as below:
Disadvantages of K-Lite Codec
- Doesn't support Real Player's files (i.e. RMVB)
- Doesn't support MKV files (Full HD video source).
Perhaps you may have already some ideas the advantages of Storm Codec which are of course support RMVB and MKV Files but it is NOT PERFECT. Let's see...
Storm Codec is Still Not Perfect
- Not all Flash Players Files (i.e. *.flv) can be played - at least those still can be played with the K-Lite Codec but not with Storm Codec.
- It still hangs occasionally - not really hangs but just nothing happen when you double click the video file. To solve this, I will just need to kill the Media Player Classic in the task manager (i.e. mplayerc.exe) and restart the player.
- Contains useless start-up command - “stormset" c:\Program Files\Ringz Studio\Storm Codec\StormSet.exe /S /opt”. It was blocked by my Windows Defender every time it starts up. It is no harm but I hate the fact that it slows down my Windows start-up time – you can still disable it through “msconfig” command.
- High possibility contains Virus and Spyware – somehow this fella is full of viruses and spywares. There are many versions out there and a lot of people complains about it. You will need to get it from the reliable site.
- No preview thumbnail and Icon - Perhaps there are the ways to fix this and I don't have a time to figure that out. But still, I just don't like the way no icon is displayed for associated video files. It seems like the video files are not recognized.
You can download the Storm Codec which I've already tested free with Virus, Trojan Horse and sSpyware from www.brothersoft.com.
Tips: Always uninstall the previous codec software before you try to install any new codec software to your system.
Summary
The most obvious advantages over K-Lite codec is very clear - support RMVB and MKV. Perhaps Storm Codec is the most complete video codec software, but honestly I'm still very concern on the source itself whether it is completely clean from Virus, Trojan Hourse and Spyware. I have heard a lot of complains either from my friend or online forum which makes me no confident on downloading this codec.
P/S: I'm currently reviewing the VLC (another famous open source codec) and will write about it in my next post. Hopefully it will be a better option. :)
6 Comments:
Thanks for the review. I am on the fence about whether to try this or not. Some say the virus alerts are false positives because of remnants of an adware toolbar.
I had K-Lite for a long time and added Realplayer functionality to it with an alternative Real codec (same with Quicktime).
I stopped using K-Lite when I found VLC played everything I had especially window media streams from online broadcasts (.asx and .asf). However, now VLC (current and old versions) no longer supports playing those types of streaming files. I think I'll go back to K-Lite or try out CCCP since it is open source.
Because VLC doesn't install codecs in the regular sense and it is supposed to play RM and MKV, I can leave it installed as a back-up player.
Thanks for your comments and sharing. I"m currently using VLC and so far so good. One not so good thing is when you try to move the progress bar while playing RMVB, it tends to lag a bit and somehow the progress bar is also not synch up with the movie. This is only for RMVB and other video format seems okay.
Never tried before CCCP, may give it a try one day. Is it good? :) I seldom play .asx and .asf, I think overall it will still consider okay, provided I can play almost all kind of video format with VLC.
I didn't go with CCCP yet. Found "The KMPlayer" that is a bundle like VLC (sort of). It doesn't have network serving of media that VLC does, but I never used that feature anyway. It supposedly does more flash things like "flash chat" and streams.
But it hasn't played my favorite radio station web-streams so far.
It seems to me that playing rm files is taxing on all media players tried so far. VLC is good choice, I think. One person said it made skin look blue on his system but I never saw that on mine.
Nowadays, I have never heard windows still can go "blue". My machine has been very long time never have blue screen.
I have been using VLC for several weeks. So far, it is still good. Will blog about this later...
how can i play samr audio with vlc player?
I read the VLC spec, it seems it requires you to recompile the VLC to enable the samr audio support.
Post a Comment