Hi,

I was trying to search around but I couldnt find if there is possibility to somehow just put the xvid codec on USB pen drive together with some media player without needed to install them on PC.

I am asking for that because I would sometimes like to watch films in my work - in the break and there is no possibility to install anything on my PC.I can only copy some files to my workstation in the work.

I cant ask someone to change the policy because its on network and I work for Telecomunication company which secure their network as best as possible.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

for apps off a pen drive try www.portableapps.com

I have their whole collection on my stick (and LFS!) and it all works great, VLC might do what your looking for

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Download the zip version and unpack to your pendrive.

Quote from StuntCarRacer :

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Download the zip version and unpack to your pendrive.

This will run any Xvid videos directly from pen drive without needing to install anything on the PC?

yup vlc comes with its own set of codecs

Quote from Shotglass :

yup vlc comes with its own set of codecs

Indeed, not the worlds best codecs, but it's what I use on my pen when I'm at uni.

Also, you can use mplayer (Precompiled Mplayer win32 GUI binaries), which IMHO is more robust than VLC for plain playback. The gui is minimalistic but enough for anything you need. VLC has tons of options but the UI isn't very usable IMO. Still, good to have choices and both are excelent options.

The VLC GUI as everything one needs. Just a shame all their codecs are so shite.

Though looking at mplayer, I'm going to give it a shot as it has some nice features.

No it doesn't and it's buggy. Enable always on top then change to full screen.
Play a H.264 or what ever it is movie type, takes 100% cpu time and plays choppy (ok that's not gui issue... but a codec).

Try using subtitles, finding that the first one wasn't it and try other... You need to start playing the video again etc, just dropping the sub to the video window doesn't work, that damn thing thinks it's a video file and tries to start playing the sub. And the damn sub don't work correctly, the same sub that works fine in VobSub is ~20seconds off in VLC (ok that's not gui issue... but a codec - sort of).


Media Player Classic or BSPlayer (nb: the new free version comes with adware) are much better for everyday use IMO.


I'm an advocate for open source software, and a lot of the programs I use are OSS, but only good thing IMO in VLC is that it comes with huge list of codecs. But I do hope that will change when it gets closer to v1.0

Ah, I've not had any of those problems, mostly as I don't use sub titles, and I just turned on always on top and fullscreened... no issues.

Most of what you listed is codec, which is why I don't use VLC if I can help it (k-lite codec pack and Media Player Classic for me).

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

... (k-lite codec pack and Media Player Classic for me).

ffdshow is actually one installation which is one "item" with many decoders and common infrastructure like postprocessing, subtitles, etc. it's way more than enough for anything that "hangs around" and many that don't. it's open source, and it's just amazing.

however, both k-lite and ffdshow require installation, and the original question was, as far as i understood, for a stand-alone playback without any installation.

MPC itself doesn't require installation, and IIRC can be configured from a config file. maybe there's a possibility to use files from ffdshow combined with preconfigured MPC to use those files, into a stand alone player + all needed decoders, without any installation, but i haven't tried that. still, if k-lite or ffdshow are considered, i'd recommend MPC as the player.