One of the best codec packs on the market is the K-Lite Codec Pack, which provides almost anything you need if you are a Windows user – and let’s face it, a lot of us are – which means this codec pack is useful for most of us out there.
Like any other codec pack, K-Lite has its own small bundle variant while the full one provides practically everything you need in a video codec. There are 4 variants of the K-Lite Codec Pack: basic, standard, full and mega.
The Basic pack is small but extremely powerful and contains support playback of AVI, MKV, MP4, FLV, MPEG, MOV, TS, M2TS, WMV, RM, RMVB, OGM, WebM, MP3, FLAC, M4A, AAC, OGG, 3GP, AMR, APE, MKA, Opus, Wavpack, Musepack, DVD and Blu-ray. It also has a lot of useful functionalities like Subtitle display, Hardware accereration (DXVA2 / NVIDIA CUVID / Intel QuickSync), Audio bitstreaming, Video thumbnails in Explorer, File association options and Broken codec detection. But, of course, the cool functionalities do not stop here.
The standard pack provides all of the functionalities of the basik pack while adding some features like Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC), MadVR (an advanced and high quality video renderer) and MediaInfo Lite. This one is recommended for the average users.
Next we have the full package of K-Lite Codec Pack, and this one proves to be the best fit for anyone’s needs as it provides best features on the market. Besides the features already enlisted in the Standard pack, the full one has the following: DC-Bass Source Mod (for OptimFrog/Tak/Tracker audio support), DScaler5 MPEG-2 decoder (for DVD playback in WMP on Windows XP), DXVA1 hardware acceleration (for Windows XP), ffdshow audio/video processor, ffdshow audio/video decoder (as alternative choice for LAV decoders), Haali Media Splitter (as alternative choice for LAV Splitter) and GraphStudioNext.
Last but not least, the God almighty of the K-Lite Codec Pack, the Mega! Here is something that you may actually never fully need, but best to have it just in case you decide to want to have it all. Besides the full package, the Mega Pack has : ACM and VFW codecs for video encoding/editing, AC3Filter (as alternative choice for LAV and ffdshow audio decoders) and Haali Matroska Muxer.
The K-Lite Codec pack is compatible with the latest versions of Windows like Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and the newest of all – Windows 10. All packs provide both 32-bit and 64-bit codecs.
