How to Play MP4 with Windows Media Player?

Since movies and videos encoded in MP4 format looks great, MP4 is becoming more and more popular for storing digital audio and digital video streams, especially those defined by MPEG. Various multimedia devices like iPhone, iPad, iPod, PSP, etc. well supports the MP4 format. And you may have got many MP4 files on your computer and want to play MP4 in Windows Media Player. However, you are only to find that MP4 files are not supported by Windows Media Player by default. Then how to play MP4 files in Windows Media Player? Is it very difficult?

Well, in order to make Windows Media Player play MP4 videos, you will need to install some MP4 codecs for Windows Media Player or simply convert MP4 to Windows Media Player highly compatible WMV or AVI videos. Keep on reading and choose the way you prefer to make MP4 playable in Windows Media Player.

Method 1. Convert MP4 to Windows Media Player friendly WMV or AVI videos

The easiest way to play MP4 in Windows Media Player is to convert MP4 to Windows Media Player WMV or AVI first and then play the WMV or AVI videos in Windows Media Player with ease. To do this, you can just get a video converter and do it as easy as ABC. To convert MP4, you can turn to Aimersoft Video Converter, an easy-to-use converting program designed for providing the solution of converting videos between all the popular audio and video formats. Supported video formats include MP4, MOV, AVI, WMV, FLV, ASF, AVCHD, MKV, etc. Just download it and convert MP4 to Windows Media Player with super high speed.

Free download MP4 to Windows Media Player converter:

After downloading, follow the wizard to install and launch the program. The software interface is as below. What you need to do is to load the MP4 files you want to convert and then choose the output video format as WMV or AVI. If you like, you can edit the videos by cropping, splitting, trimming and appending special effects.

Free download MP4 to Windows Media Player converter:

Method 2. Install some MP4 codecs for Windows Media Player

In order to play MP4 in Windows Media Player, you must install some MP4 codecs first. Below are some popular Windows Media Player MP4 codecs. Any of them could be a good companion for you while playing MP4 files in Windows Media Player.

1. MP4 Splitter

In order to play MP4 files, you must have MP4 Splitter installed. Not to be confused with MPEG-4 Video, the MP4 Bit stream format is a wrapper format (similar to AVI/OGM/Matroska). The format was licensed from Apple's QuickTime by the MPEG group as the official file format for MPEG-4 content. It should become more popular as commercial entities start shipping more MPEG-4 content.

2. 3ivx MPEG-4

The 3ivx MPEG-4 decoder playbacks most MPEG-4 files including MP4, M4A, 3GP and MOV files with MPEG-4 AAC Audio and MPEG-4 Video (such as DivX 3, 4 and 5, Apple MPEG-4, Philips MPEG-4 and XviD) by using Windows Media Player or other compatible players. The 3ivx encoder produces industry-leading compact high quality MPEG-4 Audio and Video and is distributed as a plug-in for QuickTime as well as plug-ins for Video for Windows and DirectShow. This allows you to encode MPEG-4 Audio and Video in AVI, MOV or MP4 files with the encoding application of your choice.

3. FFDShow MPEG-4 Video Decoder

FFDShow is a set of DirectShow filters and VFW codec for video compression, decompression and processing and audio compression and processing. You can play almost any movie using FFDShow. FFDShow uses libav codec from ffmpeg project or for video decompression (it can use xvid.dll installed with xvid codec too), post processing code from mplayer to enhance visual quality of low bit rate movies, and is based on original DirectShow filter from XviD, which is GPL'ed educational implementation of MPEG4 encoder.

4. LEAD MPEG-4 Video Codec Standard

LEAD's MPEG-4 video codec is designed as a multimedia compressor/decompressor that registers into the Windows collection of multimedia drivers. Existing video software, such as Windows Media Player and Ulead Media Studio, can utilize this codec to play, create and edit industry standard (ISO/IEC 14496-2) MPEG-4 streams.

5. Elecard MPEG-4 Codec Pack

This Codec Pack provides a wide range of MPEG-4 decoding/encoding solutions, which are offered as DirectShow Filters. Elecard MPEG-4 Codec Pack will enable you to encode and decode various video and audio stream types.

6. K-Lite Mega Codec Pack

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack is a collection of codecs, DirectShow filters and tools. Codecs and DirectShow filters are needed for encoding and decoding (playing) audio and video formats. The K-Lite Mega Codec Pack is designed as an user-friendly solution for playing all your movie files. With K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play all the popular audio and video formats and even some rare formats. K-Lite Mega Codec Pack includes codecs for the most popular compressions like Divx and Xvid as well as some of the less popular but still necessary codecs. It also includes Quicktime and Realplayer codecs.