Vista Media Center and XVID

One of the issues I've always had with Windows Vista x64 was this stubborn inability to playback XVID files through Windows Media Center. I recently went on a mission, and what turned up was rather interesting.

I have a folder on my Linux server that has 190 movies in it, all encoded from DVD's with the XVID codec. I've always been a little wary of DIVX since it's commercialization, so the open-source XVID has been my codec of choice for a while now. If I double click one of these, it opens up with Media Player just fine and now with proper Creative X-Fi drivers, sounds are crisp, video clean, and everything is good. However, when I added a shortcut to the folder in my "Videos" folder, I could never get one to play in Media Center. It would complain that it was unable to find the file. Maddening I tell you.

I went to Google today and found the issue right away. Windows Media Player is a 32-bit application, while Windows Media Center is a true 64-bit app. All of my other applications that use the XVID codec, like Auto-GK for encryption, are also 32-bit apps, so they have all had access to the codec also. Only Media Center, which is doing things correctly, was missing that codec.

Luckily for us, there is a gentleman who has made x64 compatible codecs. Shark007's page shows both a 32-bit and 64-bit package that will decode just about anything. I personally also use another package called Media Control which allows you to fast forward, skip, pause and rewind XVID and DIVX just like any other video. This package recommends the latest FFDShow Beta be installed, so I did that first, then Media Control and finally Shark007's x64 components. In order to help everyone out, I've compiled them all together into a nice .zip file that you can get right here. Just run the FFDShow installer, then the Media Control, and lastly the x64 and you should get a nice setup that will playback just about anything in Media Center x64.