Useful guides and tutorials related to codecs and multimedia.

The current MakeMKV beta key, how long it lasts, and what to do on the day it stops working.

Why Windows says a class is not registered, what error 0x80040154 really means, and the fixes that work when registering quartz.dll does not.

Why variable bitrate usually beats a fixed one for music, the few cases where it does not, and the constant-bitrate setting that quietly makes things worse.

Getting music off a disc and into files that are worth keeping, with free rippers that check their own work and encoder settings that hold up.

Which Windows video renderer to use, what changing one actually fixes, and why stuttering is never the renderer's fault.

A walk through the four stages every video passes through between double-click and picture, and how to tell which one is failing.

Current MPC-HC configures GPU decoding on its own, so this covers how to confirm it is running and how to set it manually when it is not.

H.264, HEVC, VP9 and AV1 measured on compression, browser support and hardware decode, with the licensing question answered honestly.

Windows does not open .jxl files out of the box, and the free Microsoft extension only installs on recent builds - here are four routes that work on any version.

An honest look at where video codecs are going, with the marketing numbers stripped out and only the claims that survive checking left in.