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Windows 10 To Feature Native Support For MKV and FLAC
jones_supa writes Windows Media Player is going to become a more useful media player for those who want to play geeky file formats. Microsoft has earlier confirmed that Windows 10 will come with native support for Matroska Video, but the company now talks about also adding FLAC support. Microsoft's Gabriel Aul posted a teaser screenshot in Twitter showing support for this particular format. It can be expected to arrive in a future update for people running the Windows 10 Technical Preview. Not many GUI changes seem to be happening around Media Player, but work is done under the hood.
has been supporting these formats for how long?
WMA is dead and there's no money to be made in compression format wars. Why not support the standards?
Flac has been around for 13 years. WTF?
I could see why FLAC would be considered a geeky format, but MKV? It's pretty common, is it not?
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Security Scan and Virus Detection do not work with your operating system.
Oh wait....
The time to do that was 7-10 years ago
Not having FLAC and mkv support for a media player is simply insane. Those who cares at all for sound quality uses FLAC, even my tiny mp3 player support FLAC.
That MS "boycotted" FLAC for years because it doesn't support DRM and isn't a MS-patent trap, just hurt their desire to control all media consumption on MS-platforms; they forgot a "boycott" works both ways, and that people just used software like VLC that actually supported what people wanted.
Who knew.
So this makes sense given they dropped Media Center for the most part. Many still need a Player for media formats, and not everything is browser integrated.
Still, their is plenty of third party solutions that I think work better. For me Microsoft could dump Media Player altogether. Having used Windows for a long time
I personally think Microsoft could shed some apps even Internet Explorer and refocus on the operating system and core paid applications. Apple to me is also killing its apps, like iTunes which is pathetically bloated and runs poorly on a Windows PC. Don't know how it is on a Mac but I had to stop using it on my PC.
Having used Windows Technical Preview 10 I have wondered when Microsoft will finally do a application that adds by default XBox Music. Zune streaming was probably one of the first paid streaming content services. Yet, Microsoft never did sell it well.
Microsoft had an agenda to push Windows Media Audio Lossless, this has pretty much been abandoned now, hence the adoption of FLAC.
Apple are now in the same position, not including support for FLAC to push Apple Lossless on people.
Finally I will be able to play flacs at my friends without having them install separate codecs or players. Now if this was only possible for ogg/vorbis too!
Has anyone else noticed how much nicer Microsoft has been getting (with respect to supporting open standards) now that their market share is dropping? Smells like hypocrisy to me (I say that, but of course I want native support for these formats).
MKV and FLAC are not "geeky". MKV is simply a superior container format for video. Xvid has been on the way out for awhile now, and FLAC is necessary for people that truly care about audio quality, so it's more of an audiophile format. It could be said those people are "audio geeks", I suppose.
f u cn rd ths, u r prbbly a lsy spllr.
like the much vaulted OggFrogg, when it comes to playing things like MP3, OGG and FLAC on Windows? This is worse than IE bundling. MS was slamned down once before by making media player compulsory and useful, won't the law stop them again?
Won't someone think of the little guys?
Glad you could make it Microsoft. Glad you could come to the party and support formats that we've had for years. Oh and please make sure you support the latest and greatest too and do a good job? Not like you've done for MP4.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Stop the press: MS starting to support standard multimedia formats that have been supported by just about everybody else for years. I guess their proprietary concoctions did not make the cut.
This is a good step forward, but when is Windows going to have native support for ext2 or ext3 filesystems? They've only been around for about 20 years now.
Let me see, 8 sucks. Ordinarily it would mean the next windows doesn't suck... but then they skipped a version number and now I'm just confused.
sshd yet? psexec via SMB is brutal.
I was thinking just that. Not that I think I will swap linux for it, but it seems it's going to become less annoying having to use it.
Consumers want a program that will play any media you throw at it, without it whining about codecs or DRM or any other unneeded pains in the ass; I know this is a stretch... but has anyone at MS considered that?
Guess not.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
EXT4 support? ZFS support? Open hardware RAID?
It still can't play .gif.
What I'd like to know is whether or not this means we don't have a install a codec park (like Shark007) just so we can get support for all the common video formats in Windows Media Center.
Talking of Windows Media Center, does Windows 10 actually improve on this awesome (but sadly neglected) piece of software - or are they going to squander the opportunity again like they did with Windows 8?
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Next thing you know they'll support jpg. Get a real OS, Linux.
Will it finally support ID3 2.4?
hopefully they don't have enough market share to be able to do this anymore
i like microsofts new direction i hope its genuine but i still couldn't trust them with an OS ever again.
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no offense, but I have not heard of it until today. Is it new? Maybe it hasn't been not very popular until now (2014)? I haven't seen any audio encoded in FLAC. I have seen a few audio encoded in Ogg though.
As for me, I just encode my audio into .wave and .mp3.
This reminds me of the days you could run IE5, Windows Media Player 6.0 (don't update to 7 it's garbage!), Paint, Notepad, MSN Messenger and it was all good.
File manager turning into IE or FTP and vice versa was awesome and the software very lightweight. Pinnacle of GUI, of course Active Desktop was the first sign of garbage you had to disable so you had the first signs of microsoft turning really evil and crappy.
Great games and software in the quicklaunch if you wanted, including the almost-real DOS prompt. Use Winamp for music, as WMP doesn't have a playlist anyway. Fool around in the sound recorder if you wish. Even the minesweeper and solitaire were both the real versions.
To me it's kind of a lost computing heaven, much like some of you nuts that used NeXT, BeOS, Amiga or whatever perfect "real Unix" that never really existed. Of course IE had to go first, replaced by firefox 0.x and 1.x, then the 64K resource limit got atrocious (Firefox 0.7 ; problem stabilized at version 0.9 ; then Steam as a huge offender) and then only the 2000/XP/2003 branch was viable. Had to move from that one to linux.
I've been using 99% of those things in Windows since ten years ago...
Just because it does not come pre-installed in the OS does not mean that you cannot install free third party apps that will do it, many of them open-source, if that really is important to you.
At most this changes only affect the average joe that does not even know what a FLAC or a virtual desktop is, and probably also have no clue what is Linux, so...
In my opinion this is useless news, and a totally irrelevant and useless addition to Windows Media Player (not Windows, different things for you guys who never used "M$" products because afraid of cooties).
Really, who uses it besides the computer illiterates who have no clue that there are a huge ammount of free alternatives music/video players?
Long Paths greater than 260 characters?
How about a real start menu, not some Windows 3.1 throwback programs select window that is randomized and difficult to find the same apps on different machines?
How about bringing back default command line tools that dissappeared after windows 7?
How Fixing the API so that APIs are available for both 32-bit & 64-bit apps (ie 32-bit apps can call system APIs on 64-bit machines)
How about dumbing down window to the point its useless like Microsoft Bob?
The GREAT thing about Windows is that it runs the planet's BEST library of REAL software (and TOUGH SHIT to those that hate the use of 'emphasis).
The FIRST thing any video fan does on a new Windows machine (after installing Winrar, 7zip, of course) is install a copy of VLC and MPC (HC and/or BE version). Free software of the HIGHEST quality that makes ALL commercial alternatives look like the cynical putrid jokes they actually are.
Now you can watch video form any source- any container- any video CODEC (including the new H265)- any audio CODEC. Joy in its purest form.
So why- WHY would Microsoft be encouraging people to be using its vile, inefficient, buggy and highly restricted internal media software when its customers have access to the world's best- for FREE- courtesy of the excellent support Windows gets in the wider community? WHY would Microsoft encourage naive users to see Windows in the same locked-down pattern as Android or iOS?
For you betas- let me make this even EASIER to understand. Got an Android tablet/phone, or an Apple one. Well try accessing media on your home NAS server. Oh wait- you CAN'T. Well, not without the CRETINOUS nonsense of installing a media 'server' application on the NAS and a 'client' program on your mobile device.
Now take one of the new (MEGA-CHEAP) full Win8.1 baytrail tablets that sell for 100dollars or 80quid. Open up a file manager on your tablet. Browse the files on the NAS. Click on a video vile and launch VLC player. OH MY GOD- your video file is playing PERFECTLY with no moronic (and expensive and insanely difficult to configure and limited to certain formats/CODECS) media server program.
OBJECT-based ANYTHING stinks for computing at the app level. Android won't even allow you to install apps on your SDcard now. An object-based OS (like iOS, Android or Windows for Phones before 8.1) makes general computer use absolute TORTURE. The mere act of copying a file needs special software tools.
My point (since most of you betas will think I've gone off topic) is that what makes Windows GREAT is that you don't install the OS so it does everything for you- that isn't the winning model of Windows- or why Microsoft and Intel conquered the world). You install Windows because it is minimal, vanilla, and non-Object based- allowing simple, obvious third-party apps of unthinkable convenience and functionality.
Windows applications that rely on 'clever' code in the OS install itself are always the WORST and least useful. The best Windows apps bring in their own performance library code. VLC player, for instance, relies on NOTHING that Windows provides, beyond the essential OS functions. VLC player is wonderful because it is responsible for ALL the smart stuff itself.
Microsoft should be PROUD to play to the historic strengths of Windows, and NOT attempt to copy Google and Apple.
Am I stupid? Download k-lite codec pack and you have all the codecs you can imagine, which idiot is going to pay microsoft an other tax for a few codecs... I stay with windows 7, works fine... I have been having those codecs for years, for free... even under windows xp... Same is with iso file as drive DEAMON Tools lite, also for free. It's nice they have it, but not a reason to buy a new version of there shit...
I'd absolutely love to be able to add a windows media center extender client to my google TV device. Then I could watch over the air broadcast recordings on every TV in my house.
Not a reason to upgrade to Win 10. A tiny (180k ?) free download adds support for these if you want to use WMP.
You are wasting your time MS. People can already download that. Nothing new except new to Microsoft.
I'm still going to uninstall Media Player as soon as I buy a new Windows box or upgrade to 10. I haven't used Media Player in probably 10 years now. Shit, even Winamp is outdated and no longer being developed but it still handles everything better than Media Player -- including FLAC.
WebM uses the MKV container. So to play video (lawfully) encoded by people who haven't paid the MPEG LA tax, you need an MKV demuxer.
Wow, about freaking time... Welcome to the MKV party... about 10 years late.
As to why it is geeky, I would say because at one time pretty much all anime coming out of Japan was MKV format.
They have probably noticed that the MS Media Player sucks, and that users are moving en masse to alternatives. Mostly to VLC.
About the ONLY reason I still use MS Media Player at all, is because it is integrated with the Windows Media Center. If there was a VLC version that worked as a Media Center and remote that didn't suck I would abandon it completely. I tried one version, but it wasn't really mature enough and wasn't all that usable.
As to how good it is VS other formats, MKV tend to be smaller, though I am not sure about some of the really HD stuff. I do know more than half of every MP4 I try to play makes my computer scream audio making it unusable, and getting subs to work is pretty hit and miss. MKV is pretty solid as it has been around for awhile, and VLC plays whatever I throw at it, though subs can still be an issue though not nearly as often, though I have seen some performance issues at times.
Anyway simply put a media player that only plays a small subset of the formats out there isn't much good. People have been messing about with Media Player for years with Codec packs and various other add ons for years trying to make it more useful than MS will let it be. Crazy.
MKV is only common for pirated non-streaming contents
"The WebM container is based on a profile of Matroska." Are you now claiming that WebM itself is uncommon?
I would like to see Windows X natively support open formats like bzip2, gzip, tar, Z, and 7z.
isn't disk space really cheap these days?
Spinning disks at home yes, Internet-connected disks no. A free Dropbox provides only 2 GB, for instance. And cellular ISPs tend to charge about $10 per GB uploaded or downloaded.
How does 320 kbps MP3 compare to FLAC when you're tandeming (lossy compression and then lossy recompression)? Sometimes when I buy a CD, I want to rip it into something from which I can transcode to 320 kbps or 128 kbps depending on where and when I plan to listen to music. I was under the impression that the distortions from repeated lossy reocmpression would compound quickly.
If there was an optical disc and it happened to be able to hold all your music (insert a sufficiently large value here to satisfy you), but it still skipped if you ran through your n-second buffer, would you still be using it?
Let n > the length of one piece of music and it's fine. If there were a digital audio player with a BD-ROM drive that could hold 25,000 minutes of music but started skipping if I were to jog for 4 minutes straight, that wouldn't be a problem. I could catch my breath every 3 minutes, and the BD player could catch its. That's why I bought an MP3 CD player years ago before sufficiently large solid state digital audio players became affordable, because MP3 allowed for a much larger skip buffer than a Red Book-only player.
Turns out, I don't care about carrying everything
That's fine if you just use music for background noise or for pacing exercise (like a ~120 BPM mix for walking), not so fine if you end up wanting to play a specific song in a specific circumstance.
Vlc baby.
But just for shits and giggles I took a 320k MP3 and recoded to 128k and compared it to the CD where I ripped it as 128k and honestly? I can't tell a difference between the two.
If you can't ABX a difference between CD to 128K mp3/aac/ogg and CD to 256-320K mp3 to 128K mp3/aac/ogg, then I guess that problem is solved. Thanks for testing this for us.
There's absolutely no reason at all you should use .wav.
"Absolutely no reason" is strong words when some tools for creating mix CDs still prefer .wav. Decode to .wav in a temporary folder, burn, delete .wav.
Microsoft has decided to start using the wheel. I remember sometime before switching permanently to Linux when I noticed IE couldn't display PNG transparency. It was probably the last Windows-related facepalm I ever made as a Windows user.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
Apple, Amazon, google are never going to natively support it on thier devices.
Except that WebM, the format that Google has pushed, IS USING MKV as a container.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
MP3s sound like shit, due to a myriad of compatibility-related reasons. Keep messing with them, and you can make MP3s sound darker, dirtier, louder and more dynamically compressed, but you can never make them sound like the artist intended the music to sound. That's a major liability.
Sure, that's why you would use FLAC if you want to keep perfect audio. Also, the shittiness of MP3 is largely dependant on the encoder. Get the latest version, rip to 320 kbps MP3 and it will most definitely not sound like shit.
Perhaps you should encode MP3s at a higher bitrate than 128kbps.
Well, at least we can use the fantastic GUI for media play....nevermind
When played through a good system, you can hear the difference flac makes over mp3. Over and above flac's stellar quality, there is a bonus you get from using flac. If you ever need to recode, you can convert a flac file back to a wav file; with absolutely ZERO loss of binary data; the extracted file is identical to the original wav source file.
Do an experiment, rip from CD to wav and take an sha1 reading on the wav file. Convert the wav file to flac, delete the wav. Then, convert the flac back to wav. Take an sha1 reading of the extracted wav file. It is identical to the original wav file. Same applies to all the other great formats such as the once popular ape format.
Here's another experiment. Open up an excellent app such as foobar while monitoring your tcp connections. Depending on the ver and your settings, you may not see a single TCP packet sent. Do the same with ANY ver of WMP. Your network will melt at all of the illegal tcp connections WMP makes, data sent without asking your permission.
Will I ever use wmp? Given ms track record of lack of transparency, incompetence, and zero concern about user privacy - day late dollar shy: no thanks.
PS: Bonus round... Foobar can also be "installed" as a portable app as can VLC, flac, & lame. Foobar supports 24 bit flac out of the box, for a very long time; that's 24 bit folks, not 16 which is CD quality. If you have a good system, you can hear a huge diff.