Play Flac, Ogg, and Other File Formats in Windows 7 Media Player the Easy Way

Xiph.org also has a QuickTime component that will let youplay Ogg files in iTunes.

The installation is easy, just follow the defaults in the install wizard.

If you had WMP open while installing Open Codecs, you’ll need to restart it.

After that it’s possible for you to start playing Ogg and Flac files in Media Player right away.

You’ll notice that the xiph.org icon takes over the file associations but the default player is WMP.

Playing Ogg and Flac FilesWe ripped a CD to Ogg format usingXRECODE IIand added it to the WMP Library.

The files would play fine, but artwork and song info was missing.

To solve that…right-tap on the album and select Find album info.

Then we were able to update the album information and cover art.

Here we have updated album info for our CD which was converted to Ogg format.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind when playing Ogg files in WMP.

it’s possible for you to’t use to go to specific parts of a song using Seek.

But you might navigate to different tracks on the album.

Also, the track length isn’t displayed which is useful to have.

We had similar issues with Flac files too.

Also seek wouldn’t work on some Flac albums played directly from the WMP Library.

However, if you play individual Ogg or Flac tracks directly from the Music folder Seek would work.

Again with Flac files the track length isn’t displayed.

SoftPointer Tag Support PluginAnother utility you might want to install is the SoftPointer Tag Support Plugin for WMP.

This helps Flac and Ogg files to be recognized in WMP easier.

After we got it working it made organizing Flac files in the WMP Library easier.

Here we still had to update album info to get the album artwork though.