Combined Community Codec Pack

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Combined Community Codec Pack

The CCCP logo
Latest release:	14 / February 22, 2007
OS:	Microsoft Windows
Use:	Filter pack
License:	Freeware
Website:	http://www.cccp-project.net/

The Combined Community Codec Pack, more commonly referred to as the CCCP, is a filter pack developed by #CCCP, made up of members from various anime groups. The name is a pun on the Союз Советских Социалистических Республик (Soyuz Sovyetskikh Sotsialistichyeskikh Respublik), the Russian name for the USSR; the Cyrillic name for the USSR is initialized CCCP, however it transliterates to SSSR.

As of 2006, the CCCP is now the official Matroska playback solution, having superseded the Matroska Playback Pack.^[1]

1 Background
2 Purpose
3 Result
4 Technical details
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Background

Modern video media are complex compositions, consisting of one or several audio, video, and subtitle (and other) bitstreams encoded in various different ways and packaged into a media container format. All these different formats and methods require different interpreters (also known as codecs, due to their video coding/decoding function) installed on the system to play correctly. While codecs theoretically should not interfere with one another, some of the larger codec packs available on the internet – especially when combined with each other – can cause major slowdowns, seemingly unrelated bugs, systemic instabilities, or simply fail to render the video. The lack of standards and agreements regarding best practices has given rise to a multitude of "all-in-one solution codec packs", which by not being thoroughly tested often prove to be the sources of conflicts and system slowdowns mentioned above. Several of these packs are also notoriously difficult to uninstall and will often, after apparently having been removed, partially remain and cause clandestine and difficult-to-trace problems and incompatibilities. Sometimes the only way to fully remove these packs, or their post-uninstall residues, without becoming overly complicated has been a complete system reinstall.

It is against this background that the CCCP is a reaction. Thus, in 2005, a gathering of representatives from certain video encoding groups joined to create a minimalistic and well-integrated pack intended to require as few computer resources as possible and be fully uninstallable.

[edit] Purpose

The CCCP was created to

alleviate the major problems caused by conflicting codec packs
provide a video media playback standard for the "community"
be capable of playing back most common video media files and formats
be extremely easy to install and uninstall, even for users with no technical knowledge

The pack is small and compact, containing only what is needed for most videos. It thus saves a huge amount of effort troubleshooting the various problems caused by inappropriate combinations of filters — all one must do to view a CCCP-approved video is uninstall all other codec packs, and then install the CCCP.

The CCCP is made only for the Microsoft Windows operating system and works with 9x/2000/ME/XP/Vista.

[edit] Result

According to the feedback received and general observation, it can be reasonably inferred that it is fulfilling its purpose. The affiliated groups receive less playback-related issues and the CCCP is capable of playing back most video media while installing and consuming only a minimal amount of resources. This is further exemplified by it having been adopted as the replacement for the Matroska Packs.^[1]

As of late 2006, On2 has been recommending the CCCP as a simple decoding solution to feed video and audio to their Flix encoding application.^[2] The CCCP staff simply recommends that you do not use On2's included registry patch, but rather turn on (or off) any formats you require within the CCCP settings menu.

[edit] Technical details

[edit] Contents

Note: Installing all of these separately will not have the same effect as installing the CCCP because the ffdshow build (the core video/audio decoding software) is customized and so are all of the components' settings.