How do you manage multiple codecs and formats?

Hello there.

On a regular basis, staff will bring in video clips from home to use in various powerpoint presentations and as general classroom resources. I was wondering how everyone else goes about making sure they cover all the key codecs and decoders. Give me your suggestions!

Sven.

Using ffdshow ffdshow tryouts | Official Website gives good value for money but the codec game is always changing and a new format can pop up at anytime so its always a work in progress

Si

On our site we like to use K-Lite codec pack. Set the installer to run with the -makeunattended flag and it'll create the appropriate msi with all of your finely chosen settings. For apple formats we just use iTunes, but if given the choice, I would have went with Quicktime alternative.

I use this - CCCP - Combined Community Codec Pack
I deployed it to all machines using a startup script.

We also have VLC on all machines, again deployed using a startup script.

CCCP is good, but a little slow on development imo. VLC is a good, highly configurable player too, but I don't feel it's as user friendly as media player classic. They're all pretty good though and often come with deployment friendly installers.

deploy the vista codec pack (xp /vista) or win 7 codec pack (obviously win7) is an msi and pretty much just works

policy is wmv only as we know they will play in windows for the kids at home through the vle

use anvsoft any video convertor free to convert any mp4's etc

I read a post on here before mentioning that codec packs are bad. Using out of date codecs to circumvent copyright etc... Here I use k-lite mega codec pack though. At some point, I intend to get round to scripting or writing a small program that will automate the conversion of video files in a certain folder using default settings that I will determine. Then that way staff will just have to put their videos in a certain folder, copy the script or program into the folder or the video into the script/programme folder and then double-click the appropriate item to automatically convert their videos.