Codec related issues are something most of us are familiar with. Most of us have had experiences in the past where a media file refused to play due to a missing codec. An even trickier problem than missing codecs is the problem of codec conflicts which often occurs due to conflicting codecs being installed at the same time.

CodecInstaller analyses a video file and automatically suggests missing codec. Perhaps more crucially CodecInstaller is also capable of recording which codecs are utilised to play a video file on your system. This can quickly help you diagnose any codec conflict errors.

CodecInstaller utility has three components:

• Installed Codecs Viewer which displays all installed audio, video codecs and filters installed on your system.
• File Analyser which analyses a video file to detect the codecs required to play it. Currently it supports it supports avi, mpeg, wmv, wma, ogg, flac, mpc, mp3, mp4, wav and wx files. Quicktime and Matroska (mkv/mka) containers aren’t supported, which is slightly disappointing. If this is something you require take a look at VideoInspector ^[1].
• Common Codecs Installer contains a list of commonly used codecs which you should install on your system. It provides basic information on each of the codecs along with installation status and download links.

CodecInstaller automatically attempts to install the Crawler Toolbar during installation. Be careful not to install the toolbar along with CodecInstaller. Other than this CodecInstaller worked as advertised and we found little to complain about. CodecInstaller is not something you will use regularly. However, it is a tool which may come in handy on occasions and is something everyone should have in their collection.

[ Download CodecInstaller ^[2] ]