Ultimate List of FREE Codecs & Players - Enjoy Videos & Songs for Free Without Hassle

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Best Free Codec Player Download to Play Video Music Codec

Posted by Kaylee Wood | Last update: August 26, 2020 | 5 Min Read

Covering top 3 third-party codec players out the market instead of the native Movies & TV app for Windows 10 and QuickTime Player for macOS, this page will help you select the best free codec player to play various videos and music in high quality and blazing fast speed on computer. If needed, read our reviews and get the one you like most.

Before getting the ideal codec player, you’d better first know what a codec you want to play as often the case different codecs need different media player to handle with. Below will list all the commonly-used video and audio codecs for you to choose from. And please remember all the codecs here are supported by the codec media player we choose for you respectively.

Main Contents:

1. Commonly-used Video & Audio Codecs

2. Top 3 Free Codec Player

3. What is a Codec?

The word codec is actually a portmanteau of “compressor-decompressor”, so codec is a program created to encode or decode the video and audio from files, streams and broadcasts, so that your media player or computer can understand and play. However, there are hundreds of audio and video codecs and no doubt the variety of codecs will cause compatibility issues especially to video music playback. For example, outdated codecs are hardly supported by the newer hardware or software, and older media players barely can’t play codecs in recent days. As a consequence, finding a powerful codec media player is imperative to play any common codecs. Hence, we list top 3 codec players here for you to choose from.

Top 3 Free Codec Media Player for Windows & Mac

No. 1 5KPlayer – Free Multimedia Player with Inbuilt Codec Pack

Supported OS: Windows 10 & macOS Big Sur beta or earlier.
Supported Coding formats:
Audio - FLAC, ALAC, APE, DTS, MP3, AAC, WMA, AMR, AC3, etc.
Video – H.264, H.265, AV1, VP8, VP9, HEVC, WMV, etc.

With inbuilt codec pack, 5KPlayer acts as a versatile codec player to play any common MP4, MKV, AVI, ASF, WAV, 3GP, OGG, etc. container formats in a piece of cake. Even the highly-compressed videos with high resolution like H.265/HEVC 4K and H.264 8K videos can be processed by 5KPlayer as easy as ABC. Besides the old-fashioned media formats, 5KPlayer also keeps up with the trend so as to be able to play 360-degree videos , AV1, VVC and GoPro 4K contents and more. During the playback, 5KPlayer allows you to manually control your video, like cut the video, rotate the video, add subtitles, fast forward or slow down the video.

Besides a codec media player to play multiple video and music files, 5KPlayer comes with exclusive functions including screen mirroring iOS to computer , AirPlay and DLNA stream video music, and download online contents for free. If needed, you can also live streaming IPTV, M3U8 links, Twitch URLs and online radio stations free and no lags with 5KPlayer.

No.2 VLC – Open-source Codec Player Popular among Users

Supported OS: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux, etc.
Supported Coding formats:
Audio - MPEG Layer 1/2, MP3 - MPEG Layer 3, AAC - MPEG-4 part3, Vorbis, AC3 - A/52, E-AC-3, MLP / TrueHD>3, DTS, WMA 1/2, WMA 3, FLAC, ALAC, Speex, Musepack / MPC, ATRAC 3, Wavpack, Mod, TrueAudio, APE, Real Audio, Alaw/µlaw, AMR (3GPP), MIDI, LPCM, ADPCM, QCELP, DV Audio, QDM2/QDMC, MACE.
Video – MPEG-1/2, DivX® (1/2/3/4/5/6), MPEG-4 ASP, XviD, 3ivX D4, H.261, H.263 / H.263i, H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC, Cinepak, Theora, Dirac / VC-2, MJPEG (A/B), WMV 1/2, WMV 3 / WMV-9 / VC-1, Sorenson 1/3, DV, On2 VP3/VP5/VP6, Indeo Video v3 (IV32), Real Video (1/2/3/4).

It is the more established fashion brand that over 3 billion people choose to download to play videos and music. VLC the codec player plays most codecs with no codec packs needed, say MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MPEG-4 ASP, H.264, DivX 4/5/6, XviD, SV1, 3ivX D4 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVCMKV, AMR, WebM, WMV, MP3… However, nothing is perfect. VLC can’t read HEVC/H.265 videos in its earlier versions because VLC is lacking of HEVC/H.265 codec, so sometimes you may encounter VLC not playing MP4 files . Luckily, VLC fixes the problem in version 3.0.

No.3 PotPlayer – Customizable Codec Player Allowing for Adding Any Codecs

Supported OS: Windows
Supported Coding formats: AAC, AAC LATM, AC3, EAC3, TrueHD, MLP, DTS, H.264, H.265, etc

Most people think PotPlayer is a simple media player at the first sight, but after using many times, all of them will be amazed by its powerful functionality. As for codec playback, PotPlayer comes with its own PotPlayer Codec Pack aka OpenCodec so that there is no need to install different codecs all the time when using the player. The OpenCodec also lets users to easily add whatever codecs they want for the advanced purposes. But bear in mind, when you download PotPlayer from its official site and try to install it, you have to check the OpenCodec to be installed during the installation process. Otherwise, PotPlayer won’t decode AAC/AAC LATM/AC3/EAC3/TrueHD/MLP/DTS and some functions won’t work at all. Also, remember to manually check if the codec is updated whenever PotPlayer gets update.

FAQ: What is a Codec?

From Wikipedia : A codec is a device or computer program which encodes or decodes a digital data stream or signal. Codec is a portmanteau of coder-decoder or compressor-decompressor. A coder encodes a data stream or a signal for transmission or storage, possibly in encrypted form, and the decoder function reverses the encoding for playback or editing. Codecs are used in video conferencing, streaming media, and video editing applications.

Codecs are often divided into lossless codec and lossy codecs. Lossless codecs are often used for archiving data in a compressed form while retaining all information. The media uses lossless codecs can be further processed as the quality won’t degrade significantly. However, it surely will cost more storage capacity and network bandwidth. Lossy codecs, as the term suggests, will reduce quality in order to maximize compression. But, it will reduce cost and improve performance when data is transmitted.

External Links:
1. List of Open Source Codecs
2. Comparision of Audio Coding Formats
3. Comparision of Video Codecs

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