Useful guides and tutorials related to codecs and multimedia.

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

Install the free AV1 Video Extension to play AV1 in Movies and TV, plus why VLC and MPV play AV1 already without it.

Why music codecs and speech codecs are built differently, which audio format to pick for what, and how to fix an old clip that plays with no sound.

Why AV1 flattens the battery on some laptops and not others, how to check which side your hardware is on, and the fixes that actually work.

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.

Why there is no AV1 codec to download on Android, which players already decode it, and how to tell whether your phone does it in hardware.

Why the same image looks washed out in Microsoft Photos but perfectly normal in Paint, and how to fix the colour profile behind it.

A plain-English walkthrough of every way to get LAME MP3 Encoder 4.0 running on Windows, from the command line to Audacity to no install at all.

A tour of every Microsoft PowerToys utility for Windows 10 and 11, which four to enable first, and the ones that earn their place in a media workflow.

EAC3 track will not play on your TV or phone? Convert it to AC3 or AAC free with XMedia Recode, keeping the video untouched so it takes minutes, not hours.