Babel Machine

One thing Vista has in common with its Windows XP heritage is its fairly average ability to handle different audio and video files. While it’s happy to play Microsoft’s own Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Windows Media Video (WMV) files straight out of the box, get any version of Vista to try and handle anything exotic like H.264 video or Vorbis audio and it all goes sour.
The Ultimate version of Vista is capable of playing DVD movies without any trouble, but even this top-drawer version of Vista can’t do everything.

Here are 2 free media players for vista with which you can play almost any media file

Ffdshow To The Rescue
However, there’s a special software package called Ffdshow, which fixes everything in one hit. It’s what is called a ‘video decoding filter’, which basically means that it handles a wide range of audio and video compression formats or ‘codecs’ and allows Windows Media Player to play them rather than just telling you it needs to look for (and seemingly never finds) the codec online.

Ffdshow works exceptionally well in Windows XP and it also does the job nicely in all versions of Vista – from Basic through to Ultimate.
All you need to do is download the software, install it into your Vista PC and you’re done. It automatically links into Vista so that when any media player (not just Windows Media Player) gets set to play a video or audio file, Ffdshow lines up the correct codec so that your file plays.

Media Player Classic

Media Player Classic for Vista
However, while Vista comes with Windows Media Player, it’s not the only choice you have when it comes to media players. Back in the days of Windows 98, Microsoft’s Windows Media Player was a lean, simple player that did much the same thing as the current Windows Media Player 11, but without all the extra fluff.
While Microsoft abandoned the older player in favour of newer versions, a keen band of developers has taken the original interface and beefed it up with clever and useful new features, releasing it as Media Player Classic (MPC). If you’re finding that Vista’s Windows Media Player won’t touch your file, even with Ffdshow installed, try playing it with Media Player Classic.
To get MPC to show your videos in full-screen mode (without any Windows borders), just double-click on the video screen window. You can double-click on it again to go back to a Windows view.
There are many different video and audio formats available on the Internet. Installing Ffdshow is the ideal way to ensure that Vista can play anything you throw at it.
Adjusting The Aspect Ratio In MPC
Aspect ratio in video means the ratio between the width and height of the video image you look at. Old tube TVs had an aspect ratio of 4:3, whereas today’s new LCD and plasma TVs have an aspect ratio of 16:9. If you’re watching a video with MPC and it looks too tall or too squished, you can adjust the aspect ratio by going to MPC’s menu and selecting view -> Video Frame ->Override Aspect Ratio, and selecting from the options in the list.

Tags: audio, codec, Ffdshow, Media Player Classic, video, windows vista, WMP